Sana Suri, Associate Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, said:
'I joined the Department of Psychiatry as an MSc student in 2012. Over the last decade, I have had the pleasure of completing my DPhil, a postdoctoral fellowship, and starting my own group here. I have been extremely fortunate to be surrounded by peers and mentors who have always lifted me up and given me the confidence to take that next step forward, especially Professors Clare Mackay and Klaus Ebmeier. A huge thank you to my Heart and Brain Group - a talented and enthusiastic team of researchers who are a joy to work with. As a passionate advocate for equality in STEM, I am also very grateful that the department and the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN) have given me the space to lead initiatives supporting early career development, public engagement, and racial and ethnic diversity. I'm excited for this next phase in my career and I look forward to building on our research programme.'
About the Heart and Brain Group's research
Age-related diseases like dementia have a lasting societal and economic impact, and it is especially meaningful to study how to inform ways to prevent or delay dementia onset. Nearly a third of dementia cases can be prevented by modifying our lifestyle, in particular our cardiovascular health. We know that "what's good for the heart is good for the brain", but we still don't entirely understand why. My group's research investigates this heart-brain link in detail, by studying how the health of our heart and large blood vessels affect the brain and memory as we grow older. We use different neuroimaging scans to study changes in the structure, blood supply and function of the brain. In the long-term, this research can help pinpoint when and how we can modify our lifestyles to delay dementia. We strive to ensure that our research is both informed by and feeds into public, patient and policy discussions on ageing and dementia.