Tara Spires-Jones is Professor of Neurodegeneration at the University of Edinburgh and is one of the UK’s outstanding dementia researchers. Her work focuses on mechanisms of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. Her first important discovery is that soluble forms of amyloid beta and tau both accumulate within synapses where they contribute to degeneration and cognitive decline. The second major finding relates to the spread of tau pathology through the brain in AD which correlates strongly with cognitive symptoms. She has also made important discoveries linking two genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease to synaptic degeneration and has contributed to understanding of synapse degeneration in dementia with Lewy bodies, motorneurone disease, and schizophrenia.