Laura Parkkinen, PhD

Dr Laura Parkkinen is Professor of Translational Neuropathology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Brain Bank. With over 20 years of experience in neurodegenerative disease research and diagnosis, she specializes in Parkinson’s and related dementia. She has authored more than 70 publications with H-index of 40 (Google Scholar). She leads the Translational Neuropathology Group, which integrates digital neuropathology, AI tools, and advanced spatial omics to discover novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Her team was the first to adapt the highly sensitive RT-QuIC assay to detect alpha-synuclein aggregation in CSF from pathologically confirmed Parkinson’s patients, contributing to paradigm shift toward molecular diagnosis. Within ASAP, Parkkinen’s group will study alpha-synuclein seeding across biomaterials using complementary seed amplification assays and spatial proteomics to understand disease heterogeneity. She is strongly committed to Open Science, sharing data openly and developing open-source computational tools for the scientific community.