Rate My Professor Justin Yerbury

Professor Justin John Yerbury AM was Professor in Neurodegenerative Disease at the University of Wollongong. He earned a Bachelor of Science with first-class honours in 2004 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 2008 from the University of Wollongong, with his doctoral thesis examining the characterisation of novel extracellular molecular chaperones and their effects on amyloid formation. His research focused on the molecular mechanisms underpinning amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a form of motor neurone disease, with particular emphasis on protein misfolding, protein aggregation, proteostasis, protein homeostasis, and neuro-inflammation.

Yerbury led a research team at the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute examining these processes and their role in motor neurone disease. He held positions including research assistant, lecturer, research fellow, and Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wollongong, and served as an Australian Research Council International Linkage Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Among his awards were the Australian Society for Medical Research Young Investigator Award in 2004, the Bill Gole Postdoctoral MND Research Fellowship in 2009, the Vice Chancellor’s Emerging Researcher of the Year award in 2011, the Lorne Conference on Protein Structure and Function Young Investigator Prize in 2012, the MND Australia Betty Laidlaw MND Research Prize in 2017, the University of New South Wales Eureka Prize for Scientific Research in 2022, and the NSW Premier’s Prize for Excellence in Medical Biological Sciences in 2022. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2020 for significant service to education and research in the biological sciences and received the Keys to the City of Wollongong in 2022. Yerbury authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and continued his research leadership until his death in 2023.