Richard Frackowiak

Professor, Institute of Neurology, University College of London, UK

Session

He participated in the "See the brain, cure the brain?" session.

Biography

Richard Frackowiak is Professor and head of the Neurology Service charged with creating a new Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the Université de Lausanne (UNIL) and its Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) with the mission of establishing firm collaborative links with the Brain-Mind Institute at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

He was previously Foundation Professor of Cognitive Neurology at University College London (UCL) and Director of the Department of Cognitive Studies (DEC) at the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS-Ulm) in Paris. Formerly a Wellcome Trust Principal Clinical Research Fellow (1994-2004), he served as a Vice-Provost of University College London with responsibility for interdisciplinary activity, international research alliances and high-level NHS liaison as a non-executive director of UCLH NHS Foundation Trust Board (2002-2008). As a former Dean-Director, he successfully reorganised and managed the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square (1998-2002), which is an important component of UCL that itself is the 2nd most highly cited neuroscience University in the world (ISI Thompson 2008). He funded from a programme grant and project-managed the establishment of the Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience and its Functional Imaging Laboratory (FIL) in 1994, which he chaired and directed, and at which he has become a Lifetime Honorary Principal Investigator. In his research career he has held three consecutive Wellcome Trust programme grants. The FIL, now renamed the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, is the most highly cited neuroscience laboratory in the world (ISI Thompson 2008). 

Frackowiak holds a Chaire d’Excellence (Senior) from the Agence Nationale de Recherche (France). He is a practicing neurologist with an MA and an MD from Cambridge (Peterhouse), a DSc from London University and an honorary doctorate in medicine from Liege University. A Fellow of the Academies of Medical Sciences of the UK, France and Belgium, he is also a member of the Academia Europaea. Prior to moving to UCL, he was assistant director of the Medical Research Council Cyclotron Unit (MRCCU) at Hammersmith Hospital and head of neurology at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (RPMS).

He is scientific advisor to the Director-General of INSERM as well as honorary director of the Neuroimaging Laboratory of the IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia in Rome. He has been an adjunct professor at Cornell Medical School, New York and held prestigious visiting professorships, editorships and international society roles worldwide. He has been president of the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) and currently presides over the European Brain and Behaviour Society (EBBS).

His scientific interest is in human brain imaging in health and disease. His focus is on plasticity and recovery from brain injury and structure-function relationships, especially in relation to neurodegenerative disease and genetic associations of cognition. He has made many discoveries in these areas and also contributed fundamentally to the methods of human functional and structural neuroimaging with PET and MRI. His scientific output includes over 335 peer reviewed papers and “Human Brain Function” (in its 2nd edition). His h-index is 129 with over 90 citations per output. He has been the second most highly cited neuroscientist worldwide and won the Ipsen, Wilhelm Feldberg and Klaus Joachim Zulch prizes.