Rate My Professor Vincenzo De Paola

Vincenzo De Paola is Honorary Professor of Translational Neuroscience at Imperial College London and Professor of Translational Neuroscience at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. He received his PhD in Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology from the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research at the University of Basel in Switzerland in 2003. De Paola established his research group at Imperial College London in 2008, where it operated until relocating to Duke-NUS Medical School in 2021. His laboratory focuses on the plasticity of cortical circuits, with the goal of guiding the development of new therapies for cognitive and age-related disorders. Research themes include human cortical circuit assembly, axon and synaptic dysfunction in early stages of neurodegenerative conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia, and enhancement of axon and synaptic regeneration. The group employs innovative techniques to study these processes in models of ageing and cortical injury, examining behavioural impairment, recovery, and reorganization at the level of individual axons and synapses.

De Paola maintains an affiliation with the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London as Honorary Professor. His work contributes to understanding mechanisms of synaptic and axonal breakdown that drive cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases.