Congratulations to Professor Nick Fox, winner of the 2017 Weston Brain Institute International Outstanding Achievement Award. This £25,000 award recognizes an exceptional investigator who has made significant advances in accelerating the development of therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases of aging through translational research, demonstrated remarkable leadership, and has a record of impeccable citizenship in the research community. This year’s prize was provided by the Selfridges Group, and was open to researchers working in the UK.

Professor Nick Fox has made outstanding contributions to the development of neuroimaging methods for the detection, differential diagnosis, and monitoring of disease progression in neurodegenerative dementias. The neuroimaging tools he developed have become the academic and industry standard for tracking brain atrophy in Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials.

Professor Fox has also made exceptional leadership contributions to the field at all levels, from catalyzing the creation of significant new research capacity and recruiting junior scientists in dementia research to effectively leading national and international collaborative projects to propel the field forward.

He is a member of ADNI (Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative), an ongoing global effort to detect AD at its earliest stages and mark its progression through biomarkers, and a member of DIAN, the international Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer‘s Network. He helped establish the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre, the UK’s first clinical research facility dedicated to neurodegeneration.

He chairs the UCL Dementia Strategy Board and championed the concept of a dementia institute, contributing to the establishment of UK’s Dementia Research Institute. He now directs the UCL Dementia Research Centre, a multidisciplinary hub for clinical research into various forms of dementia.

Professor Fox is collegial, collaborative, and respects the contributions of others. He also devotes an enormous amount of time and effort to disease awareness and patient education, and chairs UK’s Rare Dementias Support Group.

In short, Professor Fox’s work has had tremendous impact on translational research and therapeutic development for Alzheimer’s disease and he is among the most highly respected investigators in this field internationally.

About the Weston Brain Institute

The Weston Brain Institute accelerates breakthrough discoveries for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases of aging, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and frontotemporal dementia. The Institute directly supports world-class neuroscience research and focuses on high-risk, high-reward projects that address the gaps in translational research using an innovative fast-track granting model. The Institute is supported by The W. Garfield Weston Foundation in Canada and the United States, and the Selfridges Group Foundation in the rest of the world.

Further information

Source: Weston Brain Institute