Paul Matthews, OBE, DPhil, FRCP, FMedSci is the Edmond and Lily Safra Professor of Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics, Head of the Department of Brain Sciences and Associate Director of the Data Science Institute at Imperial College London and Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London. He also serves as Chair of the UK MRC Neurosciences and Mental Health Board. Since 2009, he has been on the Steering Committee of UK Biobank and chairs the Imaging Enhancement Working Group, which has supported UK Biobank for creating the world’s largest imaging epidemiological dataset. In early 2018, he and colleagues the OPTIMISE Pharmacovigilance Study, an ambitious academic-industry partnership to prospectively acquire real world date concerning the safety of disease modifying therapies for multiple sclerosis.
His research addresses neuroinflammatory mechanisms of neurodegeneration with a focus on Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis. He has been addressing these using a wide range of epidemiological, MRI and PET imaging and molecular ‘omics tools. With the latter, he is leading the UK DRI Alzheimer’s Disease Multi-omic Atlas Project, an effort to provide an open resource for characterization of the molecular pathology of AD.
Previously, Matthews spent almost 9 years as a Vice President in GlaxoSmithKline, holding a variety of senior portfolios, including those for the GSK Clinical Imaging Centre and, later, the Global Imaging Group. He founded the FMRIB Centre in the University of Oxford, which he directed from 1995-2005. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow by Special Election of St Edmund Hall, Oxford and a Fellow of the Academea Europea. He was made an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE)
in 2008 for services to Neuroscience.