Dementia Researcher Vodcast

Academic collaborations shape most research careers, yet few researchers are ever taught how to start one, who to trust, or what needs agreeing before the work begins.
Adam Smith is joined by Dr Sarah Marzi, Reader in Neurogenomics at the UK Dementia Research Institute at King's College London, and Professor Georgina Charlesworth, Professor of Clinical Psychology of Ageing and Dementia at UCL and joint lead of the SPIN-D Network+. Also joining are Professor Nathan Davies, Professor of Ageing and Applied Health and Care Research at Queen Mary University of London and co-director of the Alzheimer's Society Doctoral Training Centre for Integrated Dementia Care, and Dr Amanda Heslegrave, Principal Research Fellow at the UK DRI at UCL and co-lead of the UK DRI Biomarker Factory. Between them they run an international research partnership, a national network with around 35 named co-applicants, a doctoral training centre across five universities, and a shared biomarker platform working with research teams across many projects.
The conversation follows a collaboration from first contact to final paper. It starts with how partnerships begin, often from a conference conversation or an email about data, and who should be on the application. It moves on to how to tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service, and how leadership, writing and credit are divided once the work is funded. The guests also talk about what happens when things go wrong, from partners who stop replying before a deadline to difficult meetings that leave early career researchers unsupported.
Their experience points to the same conclusion. Collaborations work best when leadership, contribution, behaviour and authorship are discussed early and revisited as the work changes.
In this episode:
How good collaborations begin, often with an email, a conference talk or someone admitting they need help
Who should be on a grant application, and how large networks decide who stays involved
What to do when the people you approach are planning to lead the same bid
How specialist labs and shared platforms tell genuine collaboration from a request for a service
Who should write a multi-institution grant, and how to share leadership without duplicating every decision
When to discuss authorship, and why it needs revisiting as contributions change
How to handle collaborators who miss deadlines, go silent or will not approve a final draft
Why agreed standards of behaviour protect early career researchers in collaborative and PPI meetings

Essential links / resources mentioned in the show:
Team EMERALD
Dementia Frontiers Fund
The 100-plus Study
UK DRI Biomarker Factory
SPIN-D Network+
INTERDEM
Alzheimer's Society Doctoral Training Centre for Integrated Care
UK DRI Biomarker Factory

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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
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Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs

In this special episode, recorded to mark UCL's 200th birthday and released on World Alzheimer's Day, three UCL researchers working at very different ends of dementia research come together to talk about what the university has contributed, and where the field goes next.
Professor Selina Wray hosts, joined by Dr Aygun Badalova, a neuropsychologist working on digital neurorehabilitation at the UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Professor Tammaryn Lashley, Professor of Neuroscience and past president of the British Neuropathological Society, and Professor Andre Altmann, Professor of Biomedical Data Science and AI, who leads the COMBINE Lab.
Their three approaches could hardly be further apart. Aygun works with people living with dementia and a therapy app built around photographs of the people who matter to them. Tammaryn works with donated post-mortem brain tissue and the pathology that no scan can yet see. Andre works with datasets large enough to assemble a disease timeline nobody has lived long enough to observe directly. The conversation moves between all three, taking in why no two brains with the same diagnosis look the same, what blood-based biomarkers can and cannot tell us yet, where non-drug interventions sit alongside the new anti-amyloid treatments, and what it actually takes to hold that breadth of work inside a single institution.
This year's World Alzheimer's Month campaign is built around the idea that the earlier you know, the more you can do, and diagnosis runs through much of the discussion. Along the way there are some UCL landmarks worth knowing about, including the 23rd letter in a pile of replies to an Alzheimer's Society newsletter appeal and what it set in motion, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission's modifiable risk factors, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46, and the UK DRI. The episode closes on what each guest hopes we will find strange about dementia research by the time UCL turns 220.
In this episode:
What two hundred years of UCL has actually contributed to dementia research, told through three very different kinds of work rather than a roll call.
Why each of the guests has stayed, and what their research would have lost elsewhere, from Queen Square Brain Bank and three thousand characterised brains to the Hawkes Institute sitting alongside the Dementia Research Centre.
How the full pipeline in one institution changes the questions people ask, with cells, tissue and clinic from the same individual, and neurologists now bringing cases to the lab rather than the other way round.
Where UCL has changed the field, including letter number 23 and the Jennings family, Sea Hero Quest, the Lancet Commission risk factors, TREM2, the tau gene silencing trial, Insight 46 and the UK DRI.
Diagnosis as the theme of World Alzheimer's Day, and what still stands in the way, from co-pathologies that no blood test can yet see to deciding who is suited to the new treatments.
What none of this can do inside one building, and why rare dementias, genetic risk and a therapy app all depend on people well beyond UCL.
Why disease modification and support for people living with dementia today are answering different questions, and the case for funding both.
What the guests want to look strange by UCL's 220th birthday, and what they are asking listeners to do now.

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A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs

Sleep, the menstrual cycle and women's brain health rarely line up the way people expect. Women report worse sleep than men, yet objective recordings often show them sleeping longer and spending more time in deep sleep, and nobody has fully explained the gap.
Host Dr Laura Stankeviciute, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg working on sleep and sex differences in brain ageing, is joined by Professor Christian Benedict, Professor of Pharmacology at Uppsala University and scientific spokesperson for the Swedish Sleep Research Society, and Dr Alana Brown, a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, whose research looks at how ovarian hormone loss changes sleep and memory.
The conversation moves from sleep architecture through the four phases of the menstrual cycle, into why insomnia is three times more common in women from puberty onwards and why obstructive sleep apnea is so often missed when the textbook symptoms were written from male patients. There is a straight assessment of melatonin, magnesium and creatine along the way, and a case for treating sleep as part of the treatment rather than a symptom that will sort itself out.
Key takeaways
The subjective and objective sleep paradox sits at the centre of the episode: women report worse sleep, but recordings often show longer total sleep time and more deep slow wave sleep than age-matched men.
Longer REM sleep latency in older women is raised as a possible early marker of brain vulnerability, with links to amyloid-beta and phosphorylated tau build-up.
Sleep does shift across the menstrual cycle, with the luteal phase most consistently linked to poorer sleep, but the guests push back on how certain social media makes this look.
HRT can ease vasomotor symptoms without fixing sleep, because years of failed nights build a psychological pattern that needs unlearning through CBT for insomnia.
Obstructive sleep apnea in women often presents without the loud snoring and witnessed apneas of the male picture, and prevalence climbs after menopause until the sex gap narrows.
The episode argues sleep is a physiological need rather than a lifestyle factor, and belongs inside the intervention rather than being left to improve on its own.

--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs

Should you pursue a fellowship or apply for a lectureship? The choice is often framed as protected research time versus a permanent contract, but the reality is more complicated.
Dr Fiona McLean hosts Dr Warren Donnellan from University of Liverpool, Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali from Teesside University, and Dr Sarah-Naomi James from University College London, to compare the jobs as they are actually experienced. They discuss teaching, hidden administration, research independence, institutional support, pay, promotion and what happens when funding ends. They also ask whether any academic role can now be considered secure, and share the questions candidates should ask before accepting a post.
Their routes show that fellowships and lectureships are not separate tracks: teaching can strengthen a fellow's next move, lecturers can still win fellowships, and careers rarely follow the tidy sequence shown on a CV.
In this episode:
What teaching-and-research and teaching-and-scholarship lectureships involve day to day
How fellowships create independence, and where institutional control still applies
Why teaching, administration and student support often consume more time than workload figures suggest
What happens when a fellowship ends, including tenure-track promises and the need for further funding
How salary bands, spine points and contribution points affect pay
Whether any academic role can now be considered secure
The interview questions that reveal expectations and departmental culture
Why teaching experience, mentorship and resilience can keep more than one career route open

--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs

Changing the course of dementia depends entirely on where you are standing, and this panel is standing in four different places.
Recorded in front of a live audience at the Alzheimer's Research UK Thames Valley Network Dementia Research Day 2026, Professor Emma Mead, Chief Scientific Officer at the ARUK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute, puts the question to four people who see the problem from very different ends: Associate Professor Sanjay Manohar, computational neuroscientist and lead of the Cognitive Disorders Clinic at the John Radcliffe; Professor Michele Hu, consultant neurologist at Oxford, who runs the 1,600 person Oxford Discovery Parkinson's cohort; Associate Professor Laura Winchester, bioinformatician in Oxford's Department of Psychiatry; and Peter Johnson, head of service at Dementia Oxfordshire. They cover precision diagnosis, adaptive trial design, blood biomarkers, exercise and diet, digital monitoring at home, and what patients say frightens them most, plus audience questions on genetic testing and the biomarker gap. It closes with a quick fire round where four specialists name four different priorities, and not one of them is a drug.
Key takeaways
Of roughly 500 patients seen with Alzheimer's, only about 10 have typical Alzheimer's and nothing else. Everyone else carries a different combination, and that fingerprint matters now that treatments target specific molecules.
Until this year, getting a biological diagnosis meant a lumbar puncture, so around 70% of patients never had one. Blood markers change who gets tested, and raise the harder question of what you tell people afterwards.
Multi-arm multi-stage designs, borrowed from prostate cancer, run several treatment arms against one placebo group and force go or no go calls at 6 to 12 months. ACT-PD is doing it for Parkinson's.
In the exenatide trial the placebo group improved over two years simply from being in a trial. Regular contact and something to aim at has a measurable effect you have to design around.
Once the survival figure and the monitoring burden are explained, most patients conclude the new Alzheimer's therapies are not yet for them. What they ask for is quality of life, not longer decline.
Asked what would make the biggest impact, the panel chose home digital monitoring, opening up trial data after studies close, AI as a support for thinking, and joined up hospital and community care. Not one of them named a drug.

--
A transcript of this show, links and show notes and profile on all our guests are available on our website at https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk.
If you prefer to watch rather than listen, you will find a video version of this podcast on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and on our website.
Leave us a tip:
https://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/support
Follow us on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/
https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/
https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunity
https://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher
https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.social

Download and Register with our Community App:
https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher
We gratefully acknowledge the support of our funders: Alzheimer’s Association, Race Against Dementia, Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the National Institute for Health and Care Research.
The views and opinions expressed by guests in this podcast are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the producers, funders, or sponsors.
Subscribe to our sister show 'Dementia Researcher The Blogs':
https://podfollow.com/dementia-researcher-blogs