Harriet Greene - How I Found My Way into Dementia Research: Give to Gain

Harriet Greene narrates her blog written for Dementia Researcher.Harriet wrote her first essay on Alzheimer's at 15. What followed was not a tidy line to Oxford. She missed medicine by one mark, took her insurance place in Neuroscience at Queen Mary, topped her cohort's dissertation grades, then packed a backpack for a tiny island off Bali to learn to dive. A broken arm in Australia sent her home, a summer as a divemaster in Corfu taught her more than she expected, and somewhere between the dive boat and the papers she kept reading, she realised she missed science. In her first blog for Dementia Researcher, Harriet, now a second-year PhD researcher in Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Oxford, introduces the principle behind everything she does: give to gain. It is a story about mentors in unlikely places, her mum's question "Why not you?", and why a path does not have to be perfect to get you where you want to go.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-how-i-found-my-way-into-dementia-research/Harriet Greene is a PhD student at the University of Oxford researching dementia prevention, with a focus on how vascular risk factors such as hypertension affect the brain. Her project models the neurovascular unit in vitro, allowing her to explore biological mechanisms creatively and collaborate across departments and disease areas. Supported by the British Heart Foundation for research consumables, Harriet is also interested in biotech start-ups and translating lab discoveries into patient benefit. Outside academia, she is a scuba diving instructor, shell collector and lover of the sea, with a strong belief in paying kindness forward within the research community.Leave us a Tiphttps://dementia-researcher.captivate.fm/supportFollow us on social media:https://www.instagram.com/dementia_researcher/ https://www.facebook.com/Dementia.Researcher/https://www.twitter.com/demrescommunityhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/dementia-researcher https://bsky.app/profile/dementiaresearcher.bsky.socialDownload and Register with our Community App:https://www.onelink.to/dementiaresearcher