Meet Professor Karen Duff, Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute

Professor Karen Duff is director of the UK Dementia Research Institute centre at UCL. She has worked for over 30 years on Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular focus on tauopathies.

In this video, Professor Duff recalls joining the UK DRI in 2019 and the incredible research power within the Institute.

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While dementia presents a huge global challenge, Professor Duff emphasises the progress made in her three decades of research.

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Biography

After receiving her PhD from Sydney Brenner’s department at the University of Cambridge in 1991, Professor Duff undertook postdoc positions in London with Alison Goate (1991-92) and John Hardy at the University of South Florida (1992-94). She was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida (1993-1996), Associate Professor at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville (1996-1998), and Professor at the New York University Nathan Kline Institute (1998-2006) followed by Columbia University (2006-2019) where she was deputy director of the Taub Institute.

Over the last 27 years, Professor Duff has created several transgenic mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease, FTD and other dementias to explore disease mechanisms and test therapeutic approaches. Her current interests are in exploring the role of the risk factor ApoE4 in AD pathogenesis, exploring the mechanisms and circuitry involved in the spread of pathogenic proteins within the brain and identifying the role and therapeutic potential of autophagy and proteasome-mediated clearance to remove pathological proteins.

In 2019 she was appointed Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute.