Teaching and learning for innovation excellence
MindLabs is where we develop the skills and capacities to translate the original findings of our research into actions that make a real difference in people’s lives: new models of care, redeveloped support practices, multidisciplinary collaborations and investment that responds directly to the needs and priorities of consumers.
With MindLabs at the centre of everything we do, our work stays grounded in the everyday reality of living with mental health, drug and alcohol or neurological disorders.
In this video, MindLabs Co-Lead Rachel Morell describes what’s new about this initiative.
What MindLabs does
MindLabs brings together skills, knowledge and expertise from across our Member organisations to enable collaboration and accelerate the transformation of ideas into innovative new treatments and supports. MindLabs offers:
- Support and guidance to researchers
- A learning hub for research training
- A consulting and advisory service
Each of our Flagship research programs works through MindLabs to optimise its research agenda and identify new opportunities for synergies and collaborations across the entire Mindgardens ‘ecosystem’ of staff, people with lived experience and funded research teams.
Members’ needs for training and support for effective collaboration
MindLabs polled its Members to establish the areas where they required most support to work in collaborative teams.
Respondents, who included clinicians, researchers, system managers and people with lived experience, pointed to co-design practice as one area where they needed more assistance. They also nominated qualitative methods, statistics and grant writing as areas for additional development.
As Mindgardens develops the MindLabs initiative, these findings will inform the way forward.
Read the MindLabs Scoping Survey.
Research support
Learning hub
Consultancy
MindLabs Co-Leads
Rachel Morell
Director Of Business Operations & Mindlabs Co-Lead
Rachel Morell
Director Of Business Operations & Mindlabs Co-Lead
Rachel transitioned from a career in accounting and finance spanning more than 18 years to retrain as an exercise physiologist, joining the Keeping the Body In Mind (KBIM) team as research co-ordinator in 2016 before completing a Master of Science by Research in Psychiatry in 2021. Rachel’s expertise in business operations and governance, together with a wealth of experience in the translation of mental health research into practice, brings a highly specialised skill set to the Mindgardens team, which is vital to the organisation’s mission. She is passionate about providing a supportive and commercially-aware environment to enable collaboration within the Mindgardens Neuroscience Network.
During 2022 Rachel was also appointed Co-Lead of MindLabs, in preparation for an intensified focus on training, research support and seeding grants to build skills across the Mindgardens network for effective multi-disciplinary research collaboration. She is a member of the Mindgardens executive.
Catherine O’Donnell
Director Of Lived Experience Engagement & Mindlabs Co-Lead
Catherine O’Donnell
Director Of Lived Experience Engagement & Mindlabs Co-Lead
Catherine is responsible for ensuring the integration of lived experience perspectives in all Mindgardens research, clinical and education work programs. With a degree in adult education and qualifications in counselling, Catherine’s earlier career was in corporate training and human resources management. She brings her own lived experience of mental health challenges to her role, which involves developing the capacity and diversity of consumer representation and engaging with Mindgardens Members to support lived experience inclusion in their work.
During 2022 Catherine was also appointed Co-Lead of MindLabs, in preparation for an intensified focus on training, research support and seeding grants to build skills across the Mindgardens network for effective multi-disciplinary research collaboration.
Mindgardens Neuroscience Network acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respect to them and their cultures, and to Elders past, present and emerging.
We acknowledge the voices of people with lived experience, their carers, families and kinship groups. We recognise the expertise acquired through living with a mental health, drug and alcohol or neurological disorder and acknowledge those who care for people on their recovery journey. We place lived experience at the heart of all that we do.
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