HEAD-TBI Investigators:
Dr Emma Russell is a postdoctoral researcher working within the Glasgow Brain Injury Research Group and will be leading the HEAD-TBI study. She has a PhD and postdoctoral research experience at the University of Glasgow, with an excellent background in working with big data relating to lifelong health and dementia outcomes. Her PhD thesis focused primarily on neurodegenerative disease and lifelong health in former professional football players. The HEAD-TBI study is funded by her successful early postdoctoral fellowship application to the Chief Scientist Office (CSO).
Management and supervision of this project will consist of a multidisciplinary collaboration of researchers and experts in traumatic brain injury, epidemiology and public health. This research team can demonstrate a strong track record of publications, working with ‘Big data’ and in the field of dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases. This project will be supervised by Professor William Stewart and Dr Donald Lyall.
Professor William Stewart is consultant neuropathologist and honorary professor, leading an internationally regarding research laboratory which primarily focuses on the complex neuropathology of brain injury across a range of exposures and survivals, with particular reference to the link between traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disease. Professor Stewart acted as principal investigator on the FIELD study, which delivered landmark results, and acts as a Co-principal investigator on the Collaborative Neuropathology Network Characterizing Outcomes of Traumatic Brain Injuries group (CONNECT-TBI), which brings together top experts in brain injury from multiple institutions to generate neuropathological and clinical data to further understand the connection between traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disease.
Dr Donald Lyall is an epidemiologist and lecturer in public health at the University of Glasgow, and has experience utilising big data from the UK biobank. He has 73 papers since 2013 pertaining to brain imaging, cognitive impairment, and dementia. He is deputy lead for Psychology for SINAPSE and is national co-lead for the Alzheimer’s Research UK Deep Dementia Phenotyping network.
The University of Glasgow, the host organisation for this project, has strong big data infrastructure, which includes access to high performance computing, and are world-leaders in the field of Precision Medicine