What a year it has been!
2018 was the year that the UK DRI came to life – we felt the buzz at Connectome!
We’ve successfully recruited talented people to join our fantastic teams and we’ve set up the best facilities, to get more research underway. We’re already a family of 250, growing to 700 in the coming years as we welcome new colleagues from around the world. We’ve been thrilled to see so many of our researchers publishing great work – 232 publications and counting – and receiving recognition including the Brain Prize, the Science & PINS Prize and the Roger de Spoelberch Prize. Congratulations!
Highlights across the Institute include UCL’s launch laboratory tours, Cardiff’s public engagement event, Cambridge’s huge renovation of space, Edinburgh’s scientific meeting, Imperial’s neurofilament as a biomarker workshop, and King’s investing the first Directors’ Award to develop AAV technology. You’ve all been exceptionally busy including all the lab researchers, associate directors, centre managers, theme leaders, administrators and everyone else who helped make it all happen. This is what the beginning of the end for dementia looks like. Thank you!
And next year?
We champion courageous hard workers. Make 2019 the year to challenge each other. To think out of the box. To work openly. To share ideas. To connect with people affected by dementia. To show the world what partnership looks like – across disciplines, locations, organisations and international borders. To go the extra mile.
In 2019 we will announce: A major new ‘Care Research & Technology’ programme that will bring a seventh UK DRI centre to the Institute; P3 (Pilot Projects Programme) that will provide pilot funding for exciting new, high risk ideas; a new UK DRI-wide inter-institution video conferencing and webinar platform; and plans for Connectome 2019. Increasingly the challenge will be to work, interact, celebrate and struggle together, as a single national institute.
We appreciate that we’re in uncertain times (…don’t mention the ‘B’ word), with external pressures that are beyond our control. We will advance regardless. We have the guidance, skill and enthusiasm of a tremendous Board of Trustees and the unprecedented support of our founding funders. We will continue to nurture the growing UK DRI family whatever the outside world may throw at us.
Here’s to another successful year of the dementia revolution!
We offer our heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you. Enjoy a very well-deserved break and we will see you back battle ready in 2019.
Bart & Adrian
UK DRI Directors
