Chairs & Speakers

Mary Reilly is the current chair of the trustees and the Board of Management for Guarantors of Brain. She is Professor of Neurology at University College London. Her research interests are in inherited neuropathies encompassing gene identification, pathogenetic studies, natural history studies, outcome measures and clinical trials.

Dimitri Kullmann's research focuses on synapses, ion channels, and mechanisms of neurological diseases caused by their dysfunction. He has applied some of these insights to devise gene therapies for pharmacoresistant epilepsy, and is a founder of a spinout company that aims to initiate a clinical trial in 2027. He was the Editor of Brain between 2014 and 2020. He is also a guarantor for Guarantors of Brain.

William (Liam) Gray is Professor of Functional Neurosurgery at Cardiff University and Honorary Consultant Neurosurgeon at the University Hospital of Wales. He is Director of the Advanced NeuroTherapies Centre (ANTC), a Health & Care Research Wales funded research centre for the development and delivery of Advanced Therapies Medicinal Products (ATMPs) to the brain in early phase clinical trials. He is UK CI for the uniQure AMT-130 gene therapy trial for Huntington’s Disease, and PI for gene therapy trials in Fronto-Temporal Dementia (Aviadobio) and Parkinson’s Disease (AskBio). He is also the Clinical Lead for Advanced Therapies Wales and Midlands Wales Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres.

Dr Cooper-Knock is a consultant neurologist and a geneticist at the University of Sheffield. He is from Wales originally but studied medicine at the University of Oxford between 2000 and 2006. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is an urgent health need and an archetypal complex disease determined by the interaction of multiple genetic and environmental factors. His lab focuses on discovering genetic drivers of ALS as a way to move towards personalized interventions.

Dr Bayraktar uses single cell and spatial transcriptomics technologies to characterize human brain cellular diversity in health and disease. During his training, Omer discovered neural stem cell patterning mechanisms (Nature 2013) and astrocyte layer diversity in the cerebral cortex (Nature Neuro 2020). Omer started his independent research group at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in 2018. His team has developed the cell2location computational tool to map fine cell types in spatial transcriptomics (Nature Biotech 2022). Omer is internationally funded by Wellcome LEAP, SFARI and CZI, and he steers spatial genomic strategy at the Sanger Institute.

Laurent is a fellow of Guarantors of Brain. He obtained his MD from the University of Geneva and a PhD in neuroscience from the Lemanic Neuroscience Doctoral School. He trained in Clinical Neurology, including a specific training in EEG & Epileptology, as well as in Sleep Medicine, at the University Hospitals of Geneva. He obtained a competitive Swiss National Science Foundation postdoctoral grant for his post-doctoral fellowship, which he started in July 2022 at University College London.

George is currently a Wellcome Clinical PhD Training Fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and between the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Department of Clinical Neurosciences in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge. Using spatial multi-mics and state-of-the-art organoid systems, he is currently examining the longitudinal trajectories of glioblastoma and decoding the rules that govern the transcriptional plasticity dynamics of these tumours. Previously, he graduated from Keele School of Medicine to then embark on the Cambridge Academic Foundation Programme in Cambridge, followed by a ST1 Brain Clinical Research Fellowship.

Denise completed her B.Sc. and PhD at University College Dublin and her Postdoctoral training in CNS demyelinating disease in Thomas Jefferson University (Philadelphia), supported by a Postdoctoral fellowship from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (USA). In 2009, Denise moved to Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in Northern Ireland, to start her own independent research group and became Professor of Neuroimmunology in 2018. The focus of her Regenerative Neuroimmunology research team is uncovering mechanisms of how the immune system influences tissue regeneration in the Central Nervous System. She has contributed significantly to the development of Postdoctoral Career Development support programmes at QUB and foundation of the Northern Ireland Multiple Sclerosis Research Hub.

Adrian Liston runs a biomedical research laboratory together with Dr James Dooley, Principal Research Associate. The Liston-Dooley laboratory currently works on understanding the regulation of immune responses in the tissues, in particular the brain. He has extensively worked in the cellular control over immune/tolerance switches, and how molecular defects in these switches can lead to pathologies ranging from autoimmunity and primary immunology to diabetes and neuropathology. By researching a broad range of pathologies, and using both patient samples and animal models, Liston’s research is able to identifying the common cellular pathways to pathology. Liston has been awarded the Francqui Chair, the Eppendorf Prize and fellowship to the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society of Biology. Liston currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Immunology & Cell Biology.

Virginia Newcombe is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Cambridge, as well as a Honorary Consultant in Neurosciences and Trauma Critical Care, and Emergency Medicine at Addenbrooke's Hospital. She holds the Royal College of Emergency Medicine Professorship and an NIHR Rosetrees Trust Advanced Fellowship. Virginia's research focuses on traumatic brain injury (TBI) of all severities using biomarkers and advanced neuroimaging with a particular interested in how the acute phase affects long-term outcome trajectories. She is Chief Investigator for BRAINS-TBI, a multi-centre study investigating use of blood biomarkers in emergency departments for diagnosis and prognosis of mild TBI and is also building an app for management of mild TBI.

Prof Coles' research is on treatments for multiple sclerosis, at first on anti-inflammatory treatments (especially alemtuzumab) and now on experimental reparative therapies. He also leads a trial of immunotherapy in autoantibody-associated psychosis. His clinical practice is in multiple sclerosis and other neuroimmunological diseases. He has a side-interest in how neurological diseases affect spirituality. Prof Coles is also a guarantor for Guarantors of Brain.

Pao-sheng is a fellow of Guarantors of Brain. His fellowship research project aims to investigate the specific role of glucocorticoid-induced macrophage subpopulation (MGC) in the development of human neuropathic pain with using a humanised co-culture model system and human injured nerves.

Dr Manuela Marescotti is the Scientific Editor of Brain Communications. She is a neuroscientist by training. She obtained her Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, using fruit flies to study neurodegenerations.

Dr Becky C. Carlyle is a neuroproteomics expert working on the molecular underpinnings of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disease. Becky received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where she studied the interactions between the mental illness risk gene, Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1 (DISC1) and two important neuronal enzymes. Following her PhD she spent seven years in the Yale Department of Molecular Psychiatry, where she was a member of the PsychENCODE consortium and drove a range of projects including the first mass-spectrometry proteomic assay of multiple human brain regions, and establishing the aged rhesus macaque as a model of early Alzheimer's Disease. In 2017 she joined Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Neurology, and in collaboration with academic and industry partners used proteomic techniques to identify novel tissue and biofluid markers of Alzheimer's Disease and related disorders. After returning to the UK in 2021, she was awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from Alzheimer's Research UK. Her lab currently works on identifying molecular signatures of Alzheimer’s resilience from post-mortem brains - highlighting how some individuals maintain cognitive function despite high levels of pathology, and piloting stem cell-based screening methods to target these protective pathways. She co-leads the Alzheimer’s Disease Project at the Oxford–GSK Institute of Molecular and Computational Medicine, a multidisciplinary initiative aimed at identifying cross-domain signatures of multiple pathologies using multi-omics and AI-driven neuropathology. She is Co-Investigator on a Breakthrough Discoveries for Thriving with Bipolar Disorder (BD2) Discovery award which dissects the contribution of calcium channel isoforms to bipolar disorder using novel quantitative mass-spectrometry methods.

Dr Robert McGeachan is undertaking the prestigious University of Edinburgh Clinical Academic Track (ECAT) for veterinary surgeons, combining an active programme of research with specialist clinical training. He completed his PhD in 2024 and, alongside post-doctoral research, is currently enrolled in a residency in veterinary neurology and neurosurgery. Dr McGeachan’s research focuses on the mechanisms underlying the progression of neurodegenerative disorders, with particular emphasis on tau pathology propagation, synaptic pathology, and neuroinflammation, including glial-mediated synaptic engulfment in Alzheimer’s disease and primary tauopathies. Informed by a strong One Health and comparative perspective, his work adopts a cross-species approach, utilising a naturally occurring feline model to advance understanding and treatment of dementia-causing disorders in both humans and animals.

Prof Warner is a guarantor for Guarantors of Brian. The focus of his research is to understand the molecular pathogenesis and cell biology of a number of hereditary movement disorders with the aim of developing novel translational strategies. Studies span from basic cellular neuroscience, to neuropathology and clinical studies. His research group study the cell biology, genetics and pathogenesis of movement disorders, in particular dystonia, Huntington’s disease and hereditary spastic paraplegias, with emphasis on cellular disease mechanisms.

Anna-Leigh, a fellow of Guarantors of Brain, is a computational biologist interested in neurodegenerative disease

Masud Husain is the editor of the BRAIN journal and a guarantor of Guarantors of Brain. He is Professor of Neurology & Cognitive Neuroscience at University of Oxford. His research focuses on brain mechanisms involved in directing attention, retaining memories and driving motivation. We study how attention, memory and motivation work in healthy people and how they break down in patients with Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, stroke and vascular dementia.