Two UK DRI researchers elected to the prestigious Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship

It is a pleasure to announce that Prof Karen Duff, UK DRI Centre Director at UCL, and Prof Siddharthan Chandran, UK DRI Group Leader at Edinburgh, have been elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship for their outstanding research into neurodegenerative diseases.

The 60 new Fellows, selected from a pool of 366 candidates, have been recognised for their remarkable contributions to biomedical and health science and their ability to generate new knowledge and improve the health of people everywhere.

With a career that spans over 30 years, Prof Duff is a world-leading expert in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Exploring a variety of disease-associated molecular mechanisms using innovative and state-of-the-art methods, she has created several important and widely used mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. Her current research focus is on finding ways to stop the spread of the protein tau, which accumulates in tangles in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Prof Duff joined the UK DRI at UCL as Centre Director in 2020, from Columbia University in New York. Alongside colleagues in dementia research, she was awarded the prestigious Potamkin Prize in 2006, and the British Neuroscience Association’s Award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience’ in 2020.

An expert in regenerative neurology, Prof Siddharthan Chandran is the MacDonald Professor of Neurology, Director of Edinburgh Neuroscience and Head of Edinburgh Medical School. Prof Chandran’s research combines clinical and laboratory research to investigate the role of cellular interplay in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). He was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2018, and joined the UK DRI at Edinburgh in the same year.

On this year’s Fellowships, Professor Dame Anne Johnson, President of the Academy of Medical Sciences said:

“It gives me great pleasure to welcome these 60 experts to the Fellowship to help to address the major health challenges facing society.

“Each of the new Fellows has made important contributions to the health of our society, with a breadth of expertise ranging from the physical and mental health of young people to parasitic diseases and computational biology.

“The diversity of biomedical and health expertise within our Fellowship is a formidable asset that in the past year has informed our work on critical issues such as tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, understanding the health impacts of climate change, addressing health inequalities, and making the case for funding science. The new Fellows of 2022 will be critical to helping us deliver our ambitious 10-year strategy that we will launch later this year.”

Prof Bart De Strooper, Director of the UK DRI, said:

"I am thrilled that the Academy of Medical Sciences have elected Prof Duff and Prof Chandran as new Fellows, an achievement that is richly deserved by both. They are brilliant researchers, and we are extremely fortunate to have them as part of the UK DRI. I look forward to seeing them succeed in helping the Academy continue to advance biomedical research.”

For the full list of recipients of this year’s Fellowships, please visit the Academy of Medical Sciences website.

Read more about the work of Prof Karen Duff on her UK DRI profile and feature article ‘Right drug, right patient, right time’.

Read more about the work of Prof Siddharthan Chandran on his UK DRI profile.

Article published: 11 May 2022