Karen Duff

Professor Duff is the Centre Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at University College London (UK DRI at UCL). Also Professor Emerita and Special Lecturer at Columbia University Medical Center, New York.

After receiving her Ph.D. from Sydney Brenner’s department at the University of Cambridge in 1991 she undertook postdoc positions in London with Alison Goate (1991-92) and John Hardy at the University of South Florida (1992-94). She was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida (1993-1996), Associate Professor at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville (1996-1998), and Professor at the New York University Nathan Kline Institute (1998-2006) followed by Columbia University (2006-2019) where she was deputy director of the Taub Institute.

Over the last 27 years, Professor Duff has created several transgenic mouse models for Alzheimer’s disease, FTD and other dementias to explore disease mechanisms and test therapeutic approaches. Her current interests are in exploring the role of the risk factor ApoE4 in AD pathogenesis, exploring the mechanisms and circuitry involved in the spread of pathogenic proteins within the brain and identifying the role and therapeutic potential of autophagy and proteasome-mediated clearance to remove pathological proteins.

Professor Duff has published more than 135 peer-reviewed research articles and received a number of prizes, most recently the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) award for Outstanding Contribution to Neuroscience 2020, and the Potemkin Prize in 2006.