Rate My Professor Emily Lane-Hill

Dr. Emily Lane-Hill is a Race Against Dementia Fellow and Assistant Professor in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick. She obtained her BSc (Hons) in Medical Genetics from the University of Leicester in 2016 and completed her BBSRC-funded PhD in Neuroscience at the University of Warwick in 2021. Her academic career includes serving as Co-chair of the Neuroscience Research Cluster from 2023 to 2024, Chair of the School of Life Sciences PostDoc Society from 2022 to 2024, and Associate Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies since 2021. Lane-Hill has received the Race Against Dementia Fellowship funded by the Barbara Naylor Foundation from 2021 to 2026 and a Royal Society grant for equipment from 2023 to 2025. She was awarded the Women in Neuroscience UK Researcher Award and the Leading Researcher in Neuropathology and Ageing at the WiNUKAwards2025.

Her research investigates the role of tau protein in early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, focusing on how tau aggregates disrupt neuronal excitability, synaptic transmission, and plasticity. Utilizing whole-cell patch clamp recordings and computational modeling, she has demonstrated that tau oligomers alter hippocampal circuit excitability, enhance long-term depression, and induce hyperexcitability via cerebrospinal fluid tau, affecting theta oscillations critical for learning and memory. Lane-Hill collaborates with biomarker experts at the University of Gothenburg and has developed assays screening patient CSF for tau effects. Key publications include: Islam et al. (2025), 'Phospho-tau serine-262 and serine-356 as biomarkers of pre-tangle soluble tau assemblies in Alzheimer’s disease' in Nature Medicine; Wang et al. (2025), 'Incubation with tau aggregates increases hippocampal circuit excitability' in Frontiers in Neural Circuits; Brown et al. (2023), 'Tau in cerebrospinal fluid induces neuronal hyperexcitability' in Acta Neuropathologica Communications; Hill et al. (2021), 'Truncating Tau reveals different pathophysiological actions of oligomers' in Communications Biology; and Hill et al. (2023), 'Functional applications of stable Tau Oligomers' in Methods in Molecular Biology. Her work extends to CO2-sensitive hemichannels and alpha-synuclein aggregates in Parkinson’s-related neuronal conductance.