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Early career researchers are leading 17 new awards through Alzheimer’s Society funding across the spectrum of dementia research.
Alzheimer’s Society is delighted to announce £5.45m through the 2025/26 funding call to support ground-breaking research. Awards have been made which advancing personalised approaches across the dementia spectrum from deeper disease understanding and molecular insights to person-centred experiences.
This year we have funded five new Dementia Research Leader (DRL) Fellows, including our first researchers focusing on care projects. Alzheimer’s Society DRL Fellows are experienced dementia researchers who have built on several successful years of research and are ready to begin fully independent careers.
Five new Postdoctoral Fellowships have also been awarded to researchers beginning to build their independent portfolio and three Career Development grants, which offer researchers one year of funding to gather data and build their CV in preparation for the next stage of their career.
You can learn more about our awardees below and through their Dementia Researcher profiles, and about all the awards in this funded call on Alzheimer’s Society’s website.
Meet our 25/26 DRL Fellows!
The Alzheimer’s Society Dementia Research Leader Fellowship is a five-year award designed to support researchers as they establish independent dementia research programmes, including the potential for funding for a PhD student to embed supervision and mentorship into the programme. As ambassadors for Alzheimer’s Society, they work with policymakers, funders and the public to raise the profile of dementia research.
Dr Charlie Arber, University College London – ITM2B as a mediator of inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease: opportunities through the study of rare dementias
ITM2B is highly expressed in microglia and has a role in disease-associated microglial responses with mutations causing a rare form of familial dementia. Charlie has identified that ITM2B function is also altered in Alzheimer’s disease and will generate ITM2B reporter lines to monitor how ITM2B impacts microglial cells.
Dr Ruxandra Dafinca, University of Oxford– Identifying key subcellular protein dynamics that drive synaptic dysfunction in FTD neurons
Ruxandra will use her Fellowship to identify the key protein dynamics that drive synaptic dysfunction in frontotemporal dementia pathology. Using novel proteomeic techniques, she will spatially map protein organisation and distribution to understand which pathways are disrupted by TDP-43 aggregation.
Dr Ríona McArdle, Newcastle University – Move Well: Empowering people living with dementia and their carers to manage their mobility
Ríona aims to co-create digital and mobility-focused solutions to improve independence and wellbeing for people living with dementia. A linked PhD project will also look at how to make digital tools more accessible for people from underserved communities and diverse backgrounds.
Dr Aida Suarez-Gonzalez, University College London – Reducing Cognitive Disability in Rare Dementia
Aida will support the development and feasibility testing of an intervention designed to reduce the impact of cognitive disability in people with atypical forms of Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia. She will develop adaptable resources for clinical practice and replicable individual-level protocols for future clinical trials. As part of the project, she will assess the feasibility of this approach through a pilot clinical trial, laying the groundwork for a future randomised clinical trial.
Dr Sarah Naomi James, University College London – A life course perspective on women’s higher risk of dementia: a multicohort causal inference approach
Sarah-Naomi aims to understand why women have a higher risk of dementia. She will use causal interference epidemiological tools to analyse large UK multimodal dementia metrics and develop more effective guidelines for gender-specific dementia prevention, diagnosis and care.
Meet our 25/26 Postdoctoral fellows!
The Alzheimer’s Society Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme allows exceptional early career researchers and final-year PhD students to apply for research funding to pursue a novel research idea and build their independent research portfolio, supported by a senior research supervisor in the same institution.
Dr Yazead Buhidma, University College London – Can astrocytes be targeted to treat Frontotemporal lobar degeneration?
Yazead will characterise astrocytes in post-mortem brain tissues in both sporadic and familial frontotemporal dementias to increase understanding of disease-specific astrocyte dysfunction in frontotemporal dementia.
Dr Daniel Maddison, University of Cambridge – Harnessing intracellular protein handling machinery to fight neurodegeneration-causing aggregates
Daniel will develop a live-neuron reporter system to observe proteostasis using high-resolution lifetime microscopy, to understand whether this system could be targeted to increase tau clearance in early Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr Joseph Kwon, University of Oxford – Blood and Digital Biomarkers of Neurodegeneration for Dementia Diagnosis: UK Pilot Implementation, Choice Experiment, and Health Economic Modelling (BINDING)
Joseph’s Fellowship focuses on understanding how a triage system using digital tools and blood tests could be implemented to improve dementia diagnosis.
Dr Miguel Ramirez Moreno, University of Southampton – Accelerating the discovery of overlooked disease mechanisms in dementia
In this fellowship, Miguel will expand on his work as a postdoctoral researcher and demonstrate the potential of Drosophila to characterise new disease mechanisms by screening proteins thought to drive neurodegeneration.
Dr Lesley Williamson, King’s College London – Palliative dementia care from diagnosis to end of life
Lesley will evaluate how a tool, Integrated Palliative Outcome Scale for Dementia (IPOS-DEM), currently used to assess palliative care could be used to improve access to person-centred care in primary care, such as GP surgeries.
Meet our 25/26 Career development grant awardees!
Alzheimer’s Society Career Development Grants give promising post-doctoral researchers and fellows dedicated time needed to gather data for their independent research.
Dr Emma Elliott, University of Manchester – Inequalities in Cognitive Screening in Primary Care
Emma will examine the short cognitive tests used by GPs to assess for dementia and how they could be improved for people with different educational backgrounds or from ethnic minority groups for who these tests are not always accurate.
Dr Sarah Gregory, University of St Andrews – Are modifiable risk factors for dementia associated with oestradiol, estrone and estriol in an at-risk for dementia European cohort study
Sarah will analyse whether modifiable risk factors for dementia are statistically linked with any of the three main types of oestrogen, which may help explain why women are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr Marcella Montagnese, University of Cambridge – Extending Population Brain Charts for Stratifying Dementia Subtypes and Predicting Outcomes in Diverse Real-World Cohorts
Marcella will use population modelling tools and machine learning to examine interactions between risk factors and neural changes working towards personalised risk profiles that can identify early deviations from healthy brain ageing.
Join us live at 11am BST on Thursday 25 June as Dementia Researcher hosts Dr Alice Carstairs from Alzheimer’s Society to introduce the new 2025 26 awardees. We’ll hear about the £5.45m funding call, what it aims to support, and from several funded researchers sharing short talks on their new projects across dementia science, diagnosis, care and prevention.
Dementia Researcher
