Laura Parkkinen, PhD,MSc

After graduating from King’s College London with degrees in Pharmacology (BSc) and Neuroscience (MSc), Laura returned to Finland, where she obtained her PhD in Experimental Neuropathology in 2005 in the University of Kuopio. Her PhD and early postdoctoral work produced indisputable data demonstrating some inadequacies of currently accepted paradigms in the clinico-pathological correlations of Parkinson’s disease (PD) from which she received a Franz Nissl Young Investigator Award given by the International Society of Neuropathology.

From 2005-2008, Laura worked for the Brain Net Europe consortium harmonizing the diagnosis of PD-related pathologies. She returned to UK in 2008 to work as a post-doctoral fellow in the Queen Square Brain Bank, University College London studying various neuropathological substrates of Levodopa treatment, dementia, visual hallucinations and glucocerebrosidase mutations in PD. Laura has worked in four different brain banks (Finland, Barcelona, UCL, Oxford) which has given her a solid understanding on many practical issues varying from donation programs to methodology and diagnostic work.

Since joining the NDCN in 2010, her work has been funded by the £5 million Monument Discovery Award from Parkinson’s UK to Oxford Parkinson’s Disease Centre and this funding was renewed for 2015-2010 (£5.8 million). She was also independently awarded with a Biomarker project grant 2015-2016 ($400.000) from Michael J Fox Foundation and a TreatER project grant 2017-2019 (total 6 million €) from EU Horizon 2020. Laura is a member of Academic committee for the British Neuropathological Society and member of Grant Advisory Board of Parkinson’s UK as well as Assessment Panel of Parkinson’s UK-MS Society Brain Bank.