Welcome to Alumni Reflections, in which we speak to inspiring and highly influential members of the BHF's community of researchers, and get to know the person behind the science.

In our first episode, we head to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh where, in March 2024, BHF Director of Research, Professor James Leiper, was joined by Joanna Wardlaw CBE, Professor of Applied Neuroimaging at the University of Edinburgh.

Joanna, who is among the top 10 most highly cited female researchers in the UK, is internationally recognised for her work in vascular disease and brain imaging. She is also a Group Leader at the UK Dementia Research Institute, and this Alumni Voices event celebrated the British Heart Foundation’s new partnership with the UK DRI. Together, we’ll invest £9 million into launching the UK’s first research centre dedicated to finding new treatments to prevent, halt and ultimately cure vascular dementia. We’re proud that Joanna will be Clinical Director of this groundbreaking Centre.

You can find out more about Joanna’s research at https://ukdri.ac.uk/team/joanna-wardlaw, and about the new Centre for Vascular Dementia Research, at https://www.bhf.org.uk/what-we-do/news-from-the-bhf/news-archive/2023/november/bhf-and-uk-dri-announce-centre-for-vascular-dementia-research.

If you’re a researcher whose work has received BHF funding, or if you’ve worked in a BHF-funded lab, we warmly welcome you to join your BHF research alumni community. For more information, and to sign-up to the BHF Alumni mailing list, visit bhf.org.uk/alumni.

The BHF spends at least 70p of every £1 donated on lifesaving research. If you’d like to help us fund the next research breakthrough by supporting the work of people like Joanna, visit bhf.org.uk/donate.

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