Karen Duff is a Centre Director at University College London and is an expert on mechanisms driving Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. She has used state-of-the-art approaches to address some of the fundamental questions in disease pathobiology, including how pathology, neurodegeneration and cellular function worsens and spreads through the brain, and why some neurons are more vulnerable than others to disease. She also co-founded a spin-out company based on her patented small molecule series. She has been an outstanding and influential contributor to the AD field for more than 20 years and has been a mentor to many new investigators, over 50% of them from underrepresented demographics.