John Collinge is Professor of Neurology at UCL and founded the Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, Queen Square Institute of Neurology. He is Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC)Prion Unit, the UCL Institute of Prion Diseases, and National Prion Clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, and a visiting Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory demonstrated in 1996 that the new human prion disease, variant CJD, was caused by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE)in cattle and has made key contributions to understanding prion diseases. His research focuses on the therapeutic aspects of prion and Alzheimer’s disease and the wider implications of prion-like mechanisms(seeded protein polymerisation) in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. His laboratory established that Abeta pathology can be accidentally transmitted in humans, describing iatrogenic cerebral amyloid angiopathy and iatrogenic Alzheimer’s disease. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, a Senior Investigator of the Faculty of the National Institute for Health Research and an Honorary Fellow of the American Neurological Association. He was awarded a CBE by HM The Queen for services to medical research.