UDDI seminar

Speaker Bio:

Professor Tara Spires-Jones, DPhil(Oxon), FMedSci is Director of the Centre for Discovery Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and the Immediate Past President of the British Neuroscience Association. Her research focuses on the mechanisms and reversibility of synapse degeneration in Alzheimer’s disease.  Her work has shown that soluble forms of the pathological proteins amyloid beta and tau contribute to synapse degeneration. Further, her group has discovered that pathological forms of tau spread through the brain via synaptic connections. 

Prof Spires-Jones trained in Biochemistry and French at the University of Texas at Austin as an undergraduate and earned a masters and DPhil from the University of Oxford supervised by Prof Sir Colin Blakemore.  She then moved to Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School for postdoctoral training with Prof Bradley Hyman where she stayed and started a group as Instructor then and Assistant Professor In 2013 she moved to the University of Edinburgh.

In addition to her research, Prof Spires-Jones is passionate about communicating scientific findings to the public and policy makers; increasing the rigour and reproducibility in translational neuroscience; promoting inclusivity and diversity in science; and supporting career development of neuroscientists. 

Please join us for this exciting talk.