Annual Conference 2019
SDRC Conference 2019
The fourth annual Scottish Dementia Research Consortium (SDRC) conference will be held at the Radisson Blu, in Glasgow on Monday 15th April 2019.
We welcome all members of the SDRC and everyone with an interest in dementia research in Scotland.
The SDRC Conference will showcase the world-leading dementia research taking place across Scotland. This year, we will focus on fundamental science and will show the exciting, and often unusual, research that takes place in laboratories which helps to improve our understanding of dementia and potentially discover new treatments.
We will also provide opportunities for PhD students, postdoctoral researchers and others at the early stage of their research career from all disciplines to contribute to discussions and share their ideas.
The conference will leave you feeling amazed at what fundamental science does for dementia research, as well as inspired by the cross-disciplinary and collective drive of all dementia researchers around the country.
Registration for the SDRC Conference 2019 is now closed
Monday 15th April 2019
Radisson Blu, Glasgow
PROGRAMME
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Time |
Item |
Speakers |
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9:30 -10:00 |
Doors open Registration, Tea, Coffee and the opportunity to view the poster boards and exhibits on display |
|
|
10:00 – 10:15 |
Welcome The SDRC what have we been up to? The conference today |
Prof Craig Ritchie Chair of the SDRC University of Edinburgh
Prof Frank Gunn-Moore University of St Andrews
|
|
10:15 – 10:35 |
Can we stop Alzheimer’s Disease?
New ways of preventing the progression of neurodegenerative disease
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Prof Andrew Tobin Professor of Molecular Pharmacology Institute of Molecular Cell & Systems Biology
University of Glasgow |
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10:35 – 10:55 |
Seeing how the brain works in real-time What’s new in Alzheimer Research?
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Dr Barry Crouch Research Fellow University of Aberdeen
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|
10:55 – 11:15 |
New horizons |
Miriam Scarpa Sarah Hesse Sofia Della Fuente Sarah Gregory Laura McWhirter
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11:30– 12:00 |
Refreshment Break Please take this opportunity to visit our poster boards and exhibits on display
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|
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12:00 –12:25 |
New horizons
|
Kotryna Baronaite Suzanne Croy Ilaria Pina Anna Jack-Waugh Mizuki Moriaski |
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12:25 – 12:45
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New methods to study the main suspects of neurodegeneration Demonstrating the newly developed methods to study small protein aggregates which are thought to be responsible for neurodegeneration. |
Dr Juan Varela ERC Research Fellow University of St. Andrews |
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12:55 – 13:55 |
Lunch and networking Please take this opportunity to visit our poster boards and exhibits on display “Cohort Corner”
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|
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13:55– 14:00 |
Welcome back
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Prof Jean Manson OBE Fundamental Sciences, University of Edinburgh
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14:00 – 14:20 |
It’s not just humans
What cats and other animals may be able to teach us about dementia in people.
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Prof Danielle Gunn-Moore Royal Dick School of Veterinary Studies and the Roslin Institute University of Edinburgh
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14:20 – 14:40 |
Astrocytes as upstream regulators and downstream effectors of neurodegenerative pathology How astrocytes, which make up about 40% of the cells in the
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Prof Giles Hardingham Director of the Dementia Research Institute, University of Edinburgh
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14:40 – 15:00 |
Trauma and the Brain
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Prof Lindsay Wilson University of Stirling
Hannah Morgan University of Glasgow |
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15:15 – 15:45 |
Debate/Discussion: Chaired by Prof Craig Ritchie
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|
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15:45 – 16:00 |
That’s a wrap
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Prof Frank Gunn-Moore Conference Chair
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Conference Speakers
Professor Frank Gunn-Moore
I have two relevant areas of expertise: 1) My research is focussed on understanding and developing treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease. My approach has involved using all three science disciplines (Biology, Chemistry and Physics), as such I have a wide experience of how the basic sciences can contribute to the Science and Technology of Dementia; 2) I have worked within other “pooling” initiatives in Scotland e.g. as Head of the Alzheimer’s Research UK network for East-Central Scotland, Head of the Biophotonics theme of the Stanford Scottish Universities Partnership, and also I sit on the executive for the Scottish Universities Life Sciences Alliance.
Professor Jean Manson
I hold a personal chair in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Edinburgh. I have been a research scientist in the neurodegenerative prion diseases for over 30 years and in recent years have been involved in research in Alzheimer’s disease. I have been during that time committed to bringing together a wide range of people working in this field from health care workers to scientists. I have also delivered a number of public lectures and engaged with general audiences in raising awareness of the scientific research activities in this field. I serve on government and scientific advisory committees worldwide. I am committed to facilitating advances in the dementia field through research, in particular working with young researchers and also effectively engaging with the wider community.
Professor Lindsay Wilson
I am a Professor of Psychology at the University of Stirling, with a long-standing research interest in both traumatic brain injury and dementia. I am currently involved with CENTER-TBI, which is a large scale study of brain injury and its consequences that is being conducted across centres in Europe.
Dr Juan Varela
Juan Varela studied physics in Uruguay and did his PhD in Ireland at the Centre for Bio-Nano Interactions, University College Dublin. He subsequently did a postdoc at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Neurosciences in Bordeaux (France), and a second postdoc in neurodegeneration at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge (UK). Juan has recently established his research group at the University of St Andrews funded by a European Research Council Starting Grant. His main research interests are the use of nanotechnology and high resolution microscopy to understand and cure neurodegenerative diseases.
Hannah Morgan
I began my PhD in October 2017, working with Dr Willie Stewart and the Glasgow Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Archive based at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. Current projects are directed towards understanding the relationship between TBI and the increased risk of dementia, investigating the influences of both proteinopathies and cellular changes within the brain after head injury
Professor Danielle Gunn-Moore
Danièlle Gunn-Moore graduated from the R(D)SVS, University of Edinburgh, with the Dick Vet Gold Medal in 1991. After a year in small animal practice she joined The Feline Centre, University of Bristol, initially as the Feline Advisory Bureau Scholar, then the Duphar Feline Fellow, and completed a PhD study into Feline Infectious Peritonitis in 1997. After a short period as Lecturer in Veterinary Pathology, University of Bristol, she returned to Edinburgh to establish the Feline Clinic and became Professor of Feline Medicine in 2006. She is interested in all aspects of feline medicine; she is an internationally recognised expert in her area, has lectured extensively and published over a 130 peer-reviewed research papers, plus many reviews and book chapters. In 2009 she was awarded the BSAVA Woodrow Award for outstanding contribution in the field of small animal veterinary medicine, in 2011 she was awarded the International Society for Feline Medicine/Hill’s award for Outstanding Contributions to Feline Medicine, in 2012 the Royal Dick students voted her “The clinician I would most like to be”, in 2016 FECAVA awarded her “Increased Vocalisation in Elderly Cats” the most original paper in the European Journal of Companion Animal Practice that year, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the RCVS.
Dr Barry Crouch
I obtained my PhD in medical science for research modelling cognitive dysfunction in schizophrenia at the University of Aberdeen. I now work as part of a multi-disciplinary translational neuroscience research team headed by Professor Bettina Platt. My research is currently funded by the Alzheimer’s society and seeks to enable earlier and more accurate detection of dementia using electroencephalography (EEG). We are currently working with recently developed methods allowing directional connectivity analysis to be conducted on millisecond time scales. We believe that such techniques open up new frontiers in our understanding of large scale brain network function in health and disease.
Professor Giles Hardingham
Professor Giles Hardingham FRSE FMedsci studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge before completing a PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He established his laboratory at the University of Edinburgh in 2002 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, moving onto a MRC Senior Non-Clinical Research Fellowship in 2010. He currently holds the City of Edinburgh Chair of Pharmacology and is an Associate Director of the UK DRI, leading the Edinburgh centre. His research is focussed on understanding signaling within and between cells in the brain. His aim is to characterise the interactions that maintain brain homeostasis when we are healthy, and how these mechanisms break down in diseases that cause dementia.