The SDRC continuing to publish a series of blogs from PhD Students/ Early Career Researchers in dementia and brain health that were featured in the SDRC Annual Report 2019/20.  Our blog today is from Krista Winkler, a former MSc student in research relating to the Scottish Dementia Informatics Partnership theme. 

I completed my MSc in Clinical Trials in November 2019. My dissertation centred on the public’s current perception of dementia and dementia research. I developed an expert-validated questionnaire to gather data on the public’s experience with dementia, their knowledge of dementia as a disease, their perception of dementia research, and their concerns (if any) regarding data collection during studies. I am now working on publishing my Master’s thesis as an article.

A few months ago I moved to the south of Germany. This area is a hot spot for pharmaceutical companies and research companies. I hope to work with clinical trials and advance my research in the areas of dementia and cancer in particular.

I am now on maternity leave. I have most recently worked at a wholesale pharmaceutical company in Berlin, while reading in parallel for my Masters degree part-time via distance learning at the University of Edinburgh.

Prior to this, I graduated from the B.Pharm course in Malta in 2011, my Bachelor’s thesis abstract was published in the journal Rheumatology.

I hope to use my time on maternity leave for academic purposes and would also be open to more academic research in the future if opportunities arise.

Follow the SDRC on Twitter so you can keep up to date with the Early Career researcher blog series.

If you are an Early Career Researcher or student that would like to write a guest blog for the SDRC, get in touch at sdrc@alzscot.org