Fiona Carragher, Chief Policy and Research Officer at Alzheimer’s Society
By 2040, 1.4million people in the UK are expected to be living with dementia, an increase of 40% from 2025. This means it’s vital that we ramp up momentum in scientific breakthroughs in diagnosis, treatment and support.
Yet, too many young dementia researchers feel unable to stay in research due to the challenging nature of the work and constant concerns about funding – so much talent and expertise is being lost.
That’s why Alzheimer’s Society is investing over £10million to build capacity in the field by supporting PhD students to become the dementia research leaders of the future, our biggest investment of this nature to date.
Our new Doctoral Training Centres will focus on building our knowledge of Lewy body dementia, how the cardiovascular and immune systems are involved in the diseases which cause dementia and how we can fully integrate primary care and social care after a diagnosis.
This unique programme will harness students’ passion and skills, give them access to world leading experts in the field and equip them with what they need to build a career in dementia research. It fills me with pride that we are making an investment of this scale in the next generation of dementia researchers at the early stage of their careers.
Alongside supporting early career researchers we’re continuing to fund world-class research. We are particularly proud of our Dementia Research Leader fellowship which is supporting researchers to build fully independent research careers.
These 12 individuals will each receive around £500,000 over five years, the most generous funding we have ever awarded, to give them the opportunity to lead their own labs and fulfil their potential.
Research will beat dementia, but we need to make it a reality sooner – through more funding, more partnership working, more people taking part in dementia research and investing in the next generation of dementia leaders.
Find out more at
