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Thank you to: Scientific Advisory Committees Round 2025A & 2025B Co-Chairs: Professor Stephanie Hughes, University of Otago Dunedin Associate Professor Steven Gieseg, University of Canterbury Personal Awards Committees Round 2025A & 2025B Co-Chairs: Dr Simon O'Carroll, University of Auckland Dr Christina Buchanan, Auckland City Hospital Programme and Platform Committee Committee Chair: • Professor Mark Cook, Neurologist and Director of Department of Neurology, St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne Committee Members: • Professor Kay Double, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Sydney • Associate Professor Guillermo Gomez, Associate Professor in Precision Medicine in Neurooncology, University of South Australia • Dr Carlos OpazoMartinez, Senior Research Fellow, The Florey Institute of Neuroscience andMental Health, Melbourne • Professor Stuart Perry, Head of Discipline, Signal Processing and Analytics, School of Electrical and Data Engineering, University of Technology Sydney • Professor Cathy Stinear, Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory and Pro Vice-Chancellor Equity at the University of Auckland, prior Chair of the Neurological Foundation Council - All 34 national experts who volunteered their time for our review committees. - All 294 international experts who volunteered their time to review our project applications. From our CEO Council It’s been a huge year, and you deserve a massive thank you. Your support has helped us to invest more than ever before in neurological research and brain health in Aotearoa. This mega-investment from the Foundation has come in a year when we received the most-ever applications for funding. It’s fair to say things are tough for our research community. Fewer funding opportunities are available, and options are limited. And yet, if we don’t do the basics today, we, as a nation, won’t reap the benefits tomorrow. Thank goodness our donors are stepping in to help fix this funding gap. I’m delighted that our Council agreed to support not two but four Programmes and Platforms in the inaugural year of this visionary new funding stream. These focus on super-collaborative ways of working, and their impact will be amplified by their longer time frames. Meanwhile, we continue to support great work via our tried-and-true funding, with plenty of promising results. Brilliant researchers are tackling some of the biggest challenges of our time, fueled by your belief and support. Progress is being made in dementia, stroke, Parkinson’s and epilepsy to name just a few of the conditions in scientists’ sights. One thing that struck me this year was howmany outstanding clinicians are taking on research, pursuing ideas stemming from clinical practice. Like you, I’m excited to see where this takes us. I’m also confident that our efforts in education, especially involving young people, will pay dividends. This report covers a sample of the impact you have made in 2025/26. I think you’ll be wowed by the breadth and depth of the work made possible by our extraordinary donors, collaborators, and friends. We’re all in this together. Rich Easton, CEO Chair Matthew Slater* Deputy Chair Ailsa McGregor Matt Caughey Sonja Clapham Stephanie Clare David Fear Simon John° Mike Milsom Debbie Snell ° RetiredMarch 2026 *Retired Sept 2026 4 5

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