Investing in Dementia Research Leaders

This graph represents the amount of funding given to undergraduates (as research bursaries), PhD students, research fellows and clinical fellows per financial year.

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 We have invested nearly £6.5 million in our Dementia Research Leaders since the programme launched in January 2014.

• Our Dementia Research Leaders are at the earlier stages of their careers and include PhD students, clinical fellows, research fellows and undergraduate students. 

• Alzheimer's Society has a strong track record of developing leading researchers - 65 per cent of our funded research fellows are still active in the field. 

• Although we launched our official Dementia Research Leaders programme in 2014, Alzheimer's Society have been investing in researchers since 1989, when we awarded a PhD studentship grant to Professor John Hardy.

• We have invested £3.2 million in our eight ground breaking Doctoral Training Centres. A further £1.6 million for the centres was generously provided by the host universities, allowing us to bring the total number of PhD students in these centres to 52. 

• Our Dementia Research Leaders come from both our biomedical and care research funding streams. Our funding in 2014-2015 saw us invest more than ever in care research grants, with £3.1 million going towards early career researchers who aim to understand how to better care for people with dementia. 

• Our investment in our early career researchers has so far totalled over £16 million.  

• We invest more than money into our researchers - we also aim to help with their overall career development. This includes pinpointing external opportunities for public engagement, communications and other training, and Alzheimer's Society is working towards providing extra skills and training for our Dementia Research Leaders.  

• Another important way to invest in our researchers is ensuring that we make use of public and patient involvement. This will help our researchers to ensure that they put people with dementia at the forefront of their research. Our public and patient involvement is guided by our Research Network, who are people with dementia, carers or former carers who help us to decide our funding strategy. Some Research Network members will further aid researchers by monitoring their progress and helping to set priorities with people with dementia and their carers at the forefront of our research. 

Want to know more? Hear from our current Dementia Research Leaders.

Alzheimer's Society commissioned RAND Europe to review the UK dementia research landscape in 2015. Read the full report here.