[6] Using genealogical information, Yerbury traced suspected cases of motor neuron disease in his family to at least 1920 and possibly further back.
[8] He received his PhD from the university in 2008 for a thesis entitled Characterisation of novel extracellular molecular chaperones and their effects on amyloid formation.
Yerbury became a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wollongong in 2012.
He spent the rest of his life studying the disease which affects around 2000 Australians, alongside his team at the Illawarra Health and Medical Research Institute (IHMRI), based at the University of Wollongong.
He was initially denied a suitable wheelchair and house modifications under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), sparking an online crowdfunding campaign.
[12] After coming to the attention of Federal Labor MP Sharon Bird, he was provided with an appropriate wheelchair and some home modifications under the scheme.
[13] In April 2017 Yerbury met physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who lived with MND for over fifty years until his death in 2018.
In March 2019 Yerbury, his family and carers were turned away from a planned cruise to New Caledonia because of a perceived "disability risk".
[17][18] In late 2022 he was hospitalised with a collapsed lung and his health subsequently declined until his death, aged 49, at his home on 28 July 2023.