Rate My Professor Paul Matthews

Professor Paul Matthews serves as the Edmond and Lily Safra Professor of Translational Neuroscience and Therapeutics in the Department of Brain Sciences within the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London. He held the position of Head of the Department of Brain Sciences from August 2019 to April 2024 and was Head of the Division of Brain Sciences from April 2012 to August 2019. Currently, he is Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute since April 2024 and Associate Director of the UK Dementia Research Institute at Imperial College London since September 2017. Matthews maintains several honorary appointments, including Visiting Professor at Nanyang Technological University Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh School of Medical and Veterinary Sciences, and Adjunct Professor of Neurology at McGill University. His academic qualifications include a BA (Hons) in Honour School of Natural Sciences (Chemistry) from the University of Oxford (1974–1978), MA (Oxon), DPhil from the University of Oxford, MD from Stanford University, FRCP, and FMedSci.

Matthews' distinguished career encompasses clinical training, academic leadership, and industry experience. Following a neurology residency at the Montreal Neurological Institute and post-doctoral research in the Genetics Laboratory at Oxford and the Department of Pharmacology at Stanford University, he served as Assistant Professor of Neurology and Genetics at McGill University from 1994 to 1995. At the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2005, he was an MRC Clinical Research Reader and later Professor, where he founded and directed the FMRIB Centre. Between 2005 and 2014, he was Vice President at GlaxoSmithKline, overseeing the GSK Clinical Imaging Centre and Global Imaging Group. His research specializes in neuroinflammatory mechanisms of neurodegeneration, particularly in Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis, utilizing epidemiological approaches, MRI and PET imaging, and molecular omics tools to explore mitochondrial and vascular dysfunction and novel immunomodulatory targets. Recognized with the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2008 for services to neuroscience, Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Fellow of Academia Europaea, NIHR Senior Investigator, and Fellow by Special Election of St Edmund Hall, Oxford, Matthews has chaired the UKRI MRC Neuroscience and Mental Health Board (2020–2024) and the UK Biobank Imaging Enhancement Working Group, contributing to the world’s largest population neuroimaging resource.