Programme Committee and Faculty

Professor John T O’Brien is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and Honorary Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist within Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. He is also a National Institute for Health Research Emeritus Senior Investigator and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences.

His research interests include: the application of neuroimaging in old age psychiatry; dementia with Lewy bodies; the role of vascular factors in dementia and depression and clinical trials. He has published over 600 peer-reviewed papers on these topics and has been  a member of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), British Association of Psychopharmacology, European Federation of Neurological Sciences and European Stroke Association Dementia Guideline groups. He is a recipient of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Lifetime Achievement award in Older People’s Mental Health.

His other current roles include being the NIHR National Specialty Lead for Dementia and Treasurer of the International Vas-Cog Society.

Iracema is an Associate Professor of Geriatric Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and a Consultant Psychiatrist in St. James’s Hospital, Dublin.  Iracema spent four years with the Neuropsychiatry and Memory Group at Johns Hopkins, Baltimore before moving to the UK in 2002. In 2017 she was appointed Professor of Psychiatry in Ageing and Dementia at the University of Manchester. She moved to Dublin in 2019 to join the Global Brain Health Institute (www.gbhi.org), a joint program between Trinity College Dublin and the University of California San Francisco. Iracema has a particular interest in the neuropsychiatry of neurodegenerative movement disorders including Parkinson’s disease.  She recently completed the world’s largest RCT of a non-pharmacological intervention for people with Lewy body dementias (LBDs; the INVEST project). She developed and led the Greater Manchester clinical trials’ program for dementia for several years as principal investigator, and is Chief Investigator for EU-funded SENSE-Cog (www.sense-cog.eu), a five-year program involving 27 investigators researching the links among hearing, vision and cognitive impairment.   She is also building collaborations for dementia research in Bangladesh, Pakistan and India and is leading the ‘Research Roadmap for Dementia in Pakistan’ project, which is model for lower and middle-income countries (LMIC).

Professor Schelter is Chair Professor in Applied Mathematics at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. For more than 20 years, he has specialised in data-based modelling, model-based data analysis, and statistics with applications mainly in the Neurosciences. His scientific contributions split equally into developing novel statistical analysis tools & approaches and the application thereof. Since 2012 a particular focus area of his research and work is dementia. His lead role at GT Diagnostics is bringing to market revolutionary dementia diagnostic tools in collaboration with TauRx.

Ben studied natural science at Oxford University and medicine in London.  He completed his psychiatric training in Cambridge, including a PhD with Professor David Rubinsztein looking at autophagy up-regulating drugs as potential disease modifying agents in dementia.  He is currently a lecturer in older people’s health at the University of Cambridge and honorary consultant psychiatrist.  He is clinical lead for dementia in the East of England for the CRN, national lead for stratified medicine in dementia and co-organises the University MPhil in translational medicine.  He clinical director of the Gnodde Goldman Sachs unit for translational neuroscience and the Windsor Unit at Fulbourn Hospital which seek to connect patients with dementia to the latest research and clinical trials. 

Dr Dennis Chan is a consultant neurologist and Principal Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience. He holds dual research doctorates in basic and clinical neuroscience. His primary clinical and academic interest is the detection of pre-dementia Alzheimer’s disease and he has pioneered the use of various tech-based methodologies for AD diagnosis including VR- and app-based tests. Dr Chan is one of the scientific leads for the £67M EDoN initiative (https://edon-initiative.org) tasked with delivering a digital toolkit for the preclinical detection of diseases causing dementia, using wearable tech and AI, funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK and Bill Gates.

Paul is an NIHR Intermediate Fellow at the NIHR Newcastle Biomedical Research Centre based at Newcastle University. His research interests include dementia with Lewy bodies and driving with dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Along with Professor John-Paul Taylor and Ms Kirsty Olsen he led the development of National Guidelines for driving with dementia or MCI. These guidelines have been endorsed by the RCPsych and MSNAP among others. He and Kirsty Olsen are currently researching clinical predictors of driving safety in a project funded by the Alzheimer’s Society.

Honorary Consultant Old Age Psychiatrist, Norfolk & Suffolk NHS FT

Previously Consultant Psychiatrist Northwick Park Hospital [1976-2011]

Expert witness (25 years – over 170 cases):

Joint expert - Mental Capacity in High Court (Fam) & Court of Protection.  Issues: Deprivation of liberty; contact with others; marriage & sexual relations; finances; retrospective capacity; vulnerability & undue influence; medical treatment; residence & care; testamentary capacity.

NHS Homicide Reviews; Coroner’s Inquests - mental health deaths; Fraud prosecution witness

Professional regulation: GMC Registration Appeals Panel.  Past: chair GMC/MPTS Fitness to Practice Panels; Advisor - NHS Ombudsman; Lead SOAD MHAC/CQC; Medical member MHRT.

Dr Jeremy Isaacs is a consultant neurologist in the multi-disciplinary cognitive neurology service at St George’s Hospital which has a particular focus on supporting people living with young onset dementia (www.youngdementiasupport.london).  He was a member of the 2018 NICE dementia guideline committee.  He is clinical director of the NHS London Dementia Clinical Network which oversees quality improvement in dementia care across the capital.  He is the Neurosciences Clinical Academic Group director and an honorary senior lecturer at St George’s University of London and has research interests in Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias, delirium and functional cognitive disorder.

Professor James Rowe is the Director of the Cambridge University Centre for Frontotemporal Dementia and related disorders. The Centre supports over 300 patients and families affected by the diverse array of problems caused by frontotemporal lobar degeneration.  In addition to his clinical activity, he is an international leader in dementia research, with over 250 research papers that bring together basic systems neuroscience, clinical and genetic heterogeneity, advanced brain imaging and physiology, and treatment. He trained in Experimental Psychology (Cambridge), Clinical Medicine (Oxford), Neurology (London) and his PhD (UCL), before his current position as Professor of Cognitive Neurology in Cambridge and honorary Professorship at the University of Copenhagen. The cross-disciplinary nature of his research reflects an innovative approach to experimental medicine, for the development and targeting of new treatments for dementia, including Frontotemporal dementia.

Professor John-Paul Taylor holds the Chair in Translational Dementia Research at Newcastle University. He has published over 180 peer reviewed articles, numerous book chapters and has edited two books in the field of dementia and old age psychiatry. His research is focused on the application of neuroimaging and neurophysiological approaches in understanding Lewy body dementia. Clinically he leads a specialist Lewy body disease clinic at Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust.

Sarah Pendlebury graduated in 1992 from Oxford and worked subsequently in London and France. She is Professor of Medicine and Old Age Neuroscience at the Wolfson Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia, University of Oxford and Consultant Physician at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. As Clinical Lead for Dementia and Delirium she works closely with the Electronic Patient Record Team and senior hospital management to implement improvements to the process of care for older, multi-morbid and frail patients. Sarah’s research is supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre and includes the cognitive impacts of cerebrovascular disease and acute illness and the interactions between vascular disease, neurodegeneration, co-morbidity and delirium.  She is  lead author on four books on TIA/stroke, geriatric medicine and neurology in general medicine and senior editor of Oxford Case Histories (OUP) covering the medical/surgical specialities; several of which are recommended reading for speciality exit examinations.

 

Jean worked in health & social care before taking early retirement to care for her father care as his dementia advanced rapidly.

She is passionate about supporting family carers to have a voice, to be partners in care and use their experience to help other carers as well as professionals so that services continue to improve.

Jean was founding director and Chair of the Life Story which went on to establish tide - together in dementia everyday the involvement network for carers of people with dementia as a legacy from the national Carers Call2Action. She received the Lifetime Achievement in Dementia Care award in 2018.

Claude Wischik is Professor of Psychiatric Geratology at University of Aberdeen and Chairman/CEO of TauRx Pharmaceuticals and Genting TauRx Diagnostics (GTD). He co-founded TauRx Pharmaceuticals in 2002 with the aim of discovering novel approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders based on his discovery of a short fragment of Tau protein as the fundamental building block of the Alzheimer neurofibrillary tangle. He has authored 150 scientific papers in the field of AD and there are over 900 granted patents covering the work of the team supporting the first tau-based treatment for AD and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Caroline has been nursing for 33 years, with 23 years working in hospice and palliative care.  She has a background in education and development at all levels previously developing pre and postgraduate education modules with London South Bank University. 

Caroline joined Dementia UK in 2016 and in March 2020 was delighted to take the role of Head of Professional & Practice Development. Caroline has a special interest in end of life care and in particular, issues around grief and loss for people living with dementia and their families.  With the pandemic having a huge impact on families living with dementia, ensuring appropriate post diagnostic support is available for carers is incredibly important.