Queen Square Inaugural Lectures: Professor Josephine Barnes and Professor Catherine Mummery

Professor Josephine Barnes (Professor of Imaging Neuroscience): “From memory structures to abnormal signals: measuring the brain using MRI” 

Professor Barnes completed her BA in Natural Sciences in 1998, and after three years working in science media she began as a research assistant at the Dementia Research Centre. She completed her PhD part-time in 2006 (awarded in 2007) researching imaging in Alzheimer's disease. Professor Barnes' thesis focused on the automated segmentation of the hippocampal region of the brain - an important marker of Alzheimer's disease.

Since then she has been awarded multiple grants for her work. Over the past decade she has expanded her research into the measurement and associations of imaging-based markers of cerebrovascular disease. She also has a keen interest in symptom development in Alzheimer's and mild cognitive impairment.

Professor Barnes is the Faculty Graduate Tutor for the Faculty of Brain Sciences and serves on the EDI subcommittees of the Institute of Neurology.

Professor Catherine Mummery (Professor of Neurology) ‘Taking the long way round: searching for treatments for Alzheimer’s disease’

Professor Cath Mummery has been a consultant neurologist since 2002 and leads the cognitive disorders service at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. She studied medicine at UCH, trained in neurology at NHNN and Kings College Hospital, and gained a PhD in cognitive neurology at the Wellcome Department of Functional Imaging, UCL.

She is head of novel therapeutics at the Dementia Research Centre, UCL and has been senior investigator on over 20 early phase drug trials of disease modifying agents in dementias including genetic forms of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. She is deputy director for the Leonard Wolfson Experimental Neurology Centre at NHNN, a unit dedicated to early phase trials in neurodegeneration.

She was elected to the executive of the Association of British neurologists as services chair in 2017 and also works closely with the Royal College of Physicians, sitting on the medical specialties board and chairing the joint clinical neurosciences committee. As deputy director of the NHSE Neurosciences Clinical Reference Group, she is closely involved in work to enhance neurology care for patients.