Rate My Professor Julia Edgar

Professor Julia Edgar is Professor of Neurobiology and Head of the School of Infection & Immunity at the University of Glasgow. She completed her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and her PhD in Neuroscience in the laboratory of David Price at the University of Edinburgh, where she was awarded a Wellcome Trust Prize PhD Studentship in 1995. Following her PhD, she joined Ian Griffiths' laboratory at the University of Glasgow. From 2005 to 2009, she held a Junior Fellowship from the Multiple Sclerosis Society (Scotland). In 2013, she served as Associate Staff Scientist in the Department of Neurogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Experimental Medicine in Göttingen, Germany. Her research focuses on how disorders of the central nervous system myelin sheath impact axonal health, particularly the role of oligodendrocytes in providing axonal protection. In collaboration with the Nave laboratory at the Max Planck Institute, her studies have demonstrated that normal oligodendrocyte function is required for long-term axonal integrity, influences fast axonal transport, and may support axonal metabolic needs. These findings have significant implications for understanding axonal degeneration in multiple sclerosis and leukodystrophies.

Julia Edgar has published over 70 peer-reviewed papers, including influential works such as Funfschilling et al. (2012) 'Glycolytic oligodendrocytes maintain myelin and long-term axonal integrity' in Nature; Edgar et al. (2004) 'Oligodendroglial modulation of fast axonal transport in a mouse model of hereditary spastic paraplegia' in the Journal of Cell Biology; Schäffner et al. (2023) 'Myelin insulation as a risk factor for axonal degeneration in autoimmune demyelinating disease' in Nature Neuroscience; and de Almeida et al. (2023) 'Fractalkine enhances oligodendrocyte regeneration and remyelination in a demyelination mouse model' in Stem Cell Reports. She has received the Best Paper in J Anatomy 2021 award from the Anatomical Society, the 2017 MVLS College Teaching Excellence Award as part of a team, and has organized international meetings including the 7th and 8th International Molecular Mechanisms of Axon Degeneration conferences. Edgar chairs the Scientific Advisory Panel for Motor Neuron Disease Scotland since 2020, serves on Multiple Sclerosis Society funding and treatment advisory committees, and coordinates postgraduate taught programs and courses in neuroscience, immunology, brain sciences, and veterinary biosciences at the University of Glasgow. Her recent grants include Multiple Sclerosis Society awards for investigating axo-glial signalling in progressive MS (2020-2023) and the role of KIF21B in glia (2024-2027).