Professor Martin Orrell
Martin Orrell is Professor of Ageing and Mental Health at University College London, and Visiting Professor at City University. He trained at the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry before being appointed Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry of the Elderly at University College London in 1991. In 1998, he was promoted to Reader, and in May 2004 appointed Professor. He works as an Honorary Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist and Associate Medical Director for Research and Development at North East London Foundation NHS Trust. He was Specialist Advisor to the Health Advisory Service, Clinical Advisor to the Audit Commission, a member of the Healthcare Commission Expert Reference Group on Mental Health Services for Older People, and Director and Chair of the London Centre for Dementia Care. He is Chair of the Memory Services National Accreditation Panel (MSNAP), Editor of the journal Aging and Mental Health, a Member of the Boards of the European Association of Geriatric Psychiatry and the International Psychogeriatric Association, and has published over 150 academic papers. Martin leads the SHIELD (Support at Home Interventions to Enhance Life in Dementia) research programme on psychosocial interventions designed to improve outcomes and enhance the quality of life for people with dementia and their carers.
Professor Jan Oyebode
Jan Oyebode is Professor of Dementia Care in the Bradford Dementia Group at the University of Bradford. She qualified in Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool in 1977 and took up one of the first clinical psychology posts in the country specialising in work with older people, at Newcastle in 1980. She completed a PhD in 1987 on cognitive functioning in Parkinson’s disease, before moving to Birmingham as Head of Older Adult Psychology in South Birmingham Psychology Service. Here she established an innovative multi-skilled team over a ten year period, before moving in 1998 to the position of Deputy Director and, in 2001, Director of the wider multi-specialty Psychology Service. Jan took up a part-time post at the University of Birmingham alongside her clinical commitments in 1996. In 2000, she relinquished leadership of the South Birmingham Psychology Service to take up the position of Director of the Clinical Psychology Doctorate at the University of Birmingham while continuing her clinical practice in Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health Foundation Trust, contributing to the work of the Birmingham Memory Assessment and Advisory Service. She has researched widely on topics connected with old age psychology, supervising over 50 ClinPsyD trainees to successful completion of their doctorate research. Her current research is focused on relationships in dementia, including early-onset and fronto-temporal dementia, and on continuing bonds following bereavement. She moved to Bradford to take up her current post in January 2013.
Professor Michael Stewart
Mike Stewart is Professor of Neuroscience at the Open University. He has a background in Zoology (BSc) and in Cell Physiology (PhD) from Queens University Belfast. He moved to the Open University as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in 1975, working with Steven Rose, and was appointed Lecturer in Biology in 1977, and Professor of Neuroscience in 1998. Mike has published over 160 papers and his main research interests are focused on plasticity of the vertebrate central nervous system, and the effects of ageing and neurodegeneration. He is currently investigating the morphological basis of synaptic plasticity and neurodegeneration in the mammalian hippocampus (following long-term potentiation, spatial training) using sophisticated quantitative morphometric techniques. This work utilises morphometric analysis of dendritic spine populations as well as quantification of immediate early gene expression in order to determine the precise localisation of synaptic change in the hippocampus following learning in established paradigms. Mike has held major collaborative research grants from the EU FP6 programme (PROMEMORIA) and more recently an EU FP7 award (MEMSTICK) with 6 partner laboratories. He has also held a number of BBSRC grants, most recently to develop novel 3D methods of reconstruction of neural circuitry.
Dr Rita Guerreiro
Rita Guerreiro is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Fellow working in the Department of Molecular Neuroscience with Professor John Hardy at the Institute of Neurology, University College London. She received her BSc in Biomedical Sciences in 2002, her MSc in Biomolecular Methods in 2005 from the University of Aveiro, and her PhD in 2010 from the University of Coimbra, Portugal. Her PhD was supervised by John Hardy and Catarina Oliveira and was conducted at the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, National Institute on Aging, NIH, USA. During this time she studied the genetics of dementia, mainly searching for new mutations and new genes underlying Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. Her current interests include analysis of genetic variability in several neurological diseases (mainly Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases).
Dr Roxana Carare
Roxana Carare is a Lecturer in Clinical Neurosciences in the Faculty of Medicine at Southampton University. She qualified in Medicine at the Carol Davila University in Bucharest in 1994, trained as clinical house officer in surgery and paediatrics in various Romanian Hospitals (1995-1996) and held a clinical attachment in surgery (care of the elderly) in hospitals within the UK and Republic of Ireland (1996-1997), before moving to Southampton University as a teaching assistant in Human Morphology (1998-2001). She was subsequently appointed Lecturer in Anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine, and obtained her PhD in 2006, prior to taking up her current position in 2008. Roxana is also Director of the MMedSci programme at Southampton. She has demonstrated a new pathway for the elimination of interstitial fluid from the brain, with relevance to Alzheimer’s disease. Following the discovery that solutes are eliminated along basement membranes of capillaries and arteries, her main research focus is to clarify factors responsible for the failure of elimination of beta-amyloid from the aged brain. The aim of her work is to facilitate drainage of solutes, as a therapeutic means to prevent vascular deposition of beta-amyloid leading to dementia.
Dr Christopher Kobylecki
Chris Kobylecki is a Walport Fellow and NIHR Clinical Lecturer in Neurology at the Institute of Brain, Behaviour and Mental Health, University of Manchester. He has trained in Clinical Neurology since 2005, and completed a PhD in 2010 on the mechanisms of levodopa-induced motor complications in Parkinson’s disease in Alan Crossman’s group at the University of Manchester, prior to taking up his present appointment in 2011, working at the Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre, with Alex Gerhard and Karl Herholz in the Division of Mental Health and Neurodegeneration. This research group combines access to world-class imaging facilities and large specialist clinics for neurodegenerative disorders. His research focuses on functional (positron emission tomography) and structural (MRI) imaging in neurodegenerative disorders. Chris’s current research interests include metabolic (fluoro-deoxyglucose PET) and structural imaging (MRI and diffusion tensor imaging tractography) correlates of cognitive dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease and multiple system atrophy, and amyloid PET imaging in Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia.
Dr Josephine Barnes
Jo Barnes is a Senior Research Fellow in the Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurodegenerative Diseases at the Institute of Neurology, University College London. She completed her PhD in 2006 and received the UCL Young Investigator Award in Neuroimaging Techniques in 2007 for her novel methods for calculating hippocampal volume change using MRI imaging and automated segmentation. The current iteration of such techniques is used to quantify subtle brain atrophy in individuals with dementia for large studies and clinical trials of putative treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Jo’s current research interests include relating brain atrophy measures with both cerebrovascular disease and cerebrospinal fluid markers of Alzheimer’s pathology.
Professor Margaret Esiri
Margaret Esiri is Emeritus Professor of Neuropathology at the University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Neuropathologist to the Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust. She is Director of the Thomas Willis Oxford Brain Collection (the Oxford centre for the Brains for Dementia Research Initiative) - the network of brain collections for research on dementia, and the Brain Bank for Autism and Related Developmental Research. Margaret trained as a pathologist/neuropathologist at United Oxford Hospitals (1970-1973), was an MRC Senior Clinical Fellow (1980-1985), Reader (1985-1996) and Professor of Neuropathology (1996-2007), and Emeritus Professor since 2008. She was also the former Vice-Principal of St Hugh’s College at Oxford. Margaret has authored over 300 peer-reviewed research papers, and is co-founder of OPTIMA (Oxford Project to Investigate Memory and Ageing). She is a member of the British Neuropathological Society and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists. She is co-editor (with Virginia Lee and John Trjanowski) of the definitive textbook ‘Neuropathology of Dementia’, published by Barnes and Noble.
Dr Ilona Roth
Ilona Roth is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Open University. She studied Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology at Oxford University and completed her DPhil thesis on visual selective attention in the Department of Experimental Psychology at Oxford. She is a chartered member and associate fellow of the British Psychological Society. She has contributed to a wide range of psychology courses, including introductory, cognitive, social and biological psychology, and has authored several textbooks, including most recently ‘The Autism Spectrum in the 21st Century: Exploring Psychology, Biology and Practice’. A key theme in her research is the atypical cognitive and socio-cognitive functioning that occurs in neuropsychiatric conditions, notably autism and dementia. The aims of this research are: to enhance insights into the psychological profiles and neuropsychological substrates of these conditions, and the way these vary between individuals and between sub-groups; to shed light on the experience of affected individuals and on implications for their well-being. Ilona has recently been a co-investigator on the ESRC-funded ‘MIDAS’ project (a comprehensive profile of awareness in early stage dementia) in collaboration with Linda Clare, Bob Woods (Bangor University), Robin Morris (Institute of Psychiatry), and Ivana Markova (Hull).
Dr Naaheed Mukadam
Naaheed Mukadam is a Clinical Training Fellow at the Mental Health Sciences Unit, University College London, and deputy editor for the International Psychogeriatric Association. She has previously worked as a registrar in Barnet, Enfield and Haringey NHS Trusts. Her interests focus on access to dementia services by different ethnic groups, a topic which she has been researching for the past few years, with a recently published systematic review and qualitative study in this area. She aims to continue this work, to develop interventions to improve access to dementia services for minority groups.
Dr Sebastian Crutch
Sebastian Crutch is an Alzheimer’s Research UK Senior Research Fellow and Clinical Psychologist at the Dementia Research Centre, UCL Institute of Neurology. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Oxford in 1999 and completed his PhD at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in 2004. His research has centred on the neuropsychological investigation of language, conceptual knowledge and perception in individuals with young onset, and atypical forms of neurodegenerative dementia and stroke. He also uses neuropsychology and eyetracking techniques to investigate refractory access disorders and abstract and concrete conceptual knowledge. Sebastian is involved in a number of cross-sectional and longitudinal studies characterising the progression and evolution of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration, and is particularly interested in visual disorders and disease progression in posterior cortical atrophy. He was awarded the British Neuropsychological Society’s Elizabeth Warrington Prize in 2012, and runs the Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) Support Group at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, which provides information and advice for people experiencing the progressive deterioration of their visual world.
Professor Kevin Morgan
Kevin Morgan is Professor of Human Genomics and Molecular Genetics, and leads the Alzheimer’s disease research group at the Centre for Genetics and Genomics, University of Nottingham. He has established a DNA bank with over 4000 samples from Alzheimer’s patients and controls, and is involved in UK-led research (with scientists from Cardiff, London, Cambridge, Southampton, Manchester, Oxford, Bristol and Belfast) to identify new genes in Alzheimer’s disease. The results of these studies have already been published in Nature Genetics. Kevin has established an international collaboration with Steven Younkin at the Mayo Clinic (Jacksonville USA) working on analysing a combined genetic dataset with access to 8000 DNA samples – one of the largest collections of Alzheimer’s disease samples in the world. The genome-wide association studies emerging from these works aim to identify possible causal mutations in AD and extend these into mild cognitive impairment.
Dr Magdalena Sastre
Magdalena Sastre is a Lecturer in Molecular Neuroscience at the Department of Medicine, Imperial College London. She graduated in science and completed her PhD in Biology and Health Sciences at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain. She undertook postdoctoral training in neuroscience at Cornell and New York Universities in the States and at the Universities of Munich, Bonn and Frankfurt in Germany, prior to taking up her present appointment. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Referee for the Alzheimer’s Association and member of the American Society for Neuroscience, the Brain Research Organisation and the British Neuroscience Association. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms by which inflammation affects neurodegenerative diseases, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. Her scientific contributions include the study of intracellular signalling cascade of the amyloid precursor protein and how this affects its cleavage and the formation of beta-amyloid peptide. Her research has also focused on the use of anti-inflammatory drugs as potential therapy for neurodegenerative diseases.
Dr Ruth Peters
Ruth Peters is a Research Fellow at the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London. She has worked on clinical trials and other research for Imperial since 1997. At present her work is focused on the use of different antihypertensives, frailty and risk and benefit of treatment in the very elderly. Between 2010 and 2012, she worked to help set up and develop the Imperial Clinical Trials Unit (ICTU). ICTU was launched in 2010 and is a fully UKCRC registered trials unit. Prior to 2010, Ruth helped to co-ordinate the Hypertension in the Very Elderly (HYVET) trial. HYVET was an imperial sponsored multinational double-blind RCT, which was rated ‘Trial of the Year’ by the Society for Clinical Trials and an exceptional landmark in medicine (F1000) in 2008. Her research interests include risk factors for dementia, particularly cardiovascular risk factors and potential interventions to ameliorate or prevent cognitive decline and dementia. Ruth has recently been awarded an NIHR Fellowship to assess the impact of calcium channel blockers on cognitive function of the very elderly (AI-COG).
Dr Atticus Hainsworth
Atticus Hainsworth is a Senior Lecturer in Cerebrovascular Disease within the Stroke & Dementia Research Centre at St George’s Hospital, University of London. He studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge and has a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics from Rush Medical Centre, Chicago. He held post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford University and Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, and lectureships in the University of Greenwich and De Montfort University. He is a cellular neuroscientist with previous research in stroke, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and traumatic brain injury. The focus of his current research is on cerebral small vessel disease, vascular cognitive impairment and vascular dementia. He is particularly interested in the cellular processes that cause disease, using biochemistry, histochemistry, cell culture and in vivo approaches. He has recently authored systematic reviews on in vivo models related to small vessel disease and to vascular cognitive impairment.
Dr Payam Rezaie
Payam Rezaie is Reader in Neuropathology and Head of Brain and Behavioural Sciences in the Faculty of Science at the Open University. He is also a Visiting Senior Lecturer in the Department of Neuroscience at the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP), King’s College London. Payam studied Physiology at King’s, and qualified in Neuroscience at the IoP, obtaining an MSc (in Neuroscience) and PhD (in Neuropathology and Neuroimmunology) while working in the Department of Neuropathology, at the Institute. He initially worked as a Wellcome Trust Research Associate with David Male, and subsequently as an EU-funded PDRA and project partner on two European Framework research programmes with the eminent neuropathologist Peter Lantos (Head of Department at the time). Since 2001, he has held an honorary academic appointment at the IoP, where he continues to teach on the MSc Neuroscience programme. Prior to joining the Open University as a Lecturer in 2003, Payam co-ordinated and led research into the pathogenesis of prion diseases. He was appointed Reader at the OU in 2008, Head of Brain and Behavioural Sciences in 2011, and will soon be taking up the role of Director of the Science Postgraduate Programme. Payam’s research interests and expertise focus on pathology and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders (Alzheimer’s, DLBD, Huntington’s, CJD), and neurodevelopmental conditions (including autism). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, member of the Royal Institution, the British Neuropathological Society and the British Neuroscience Association.