Professor Frank Gunn-Moore - An Academic career, then and now

Professor Frank Gunn-Moore narrates his blog written for Dementia Researcher.Forty years of a research career, told through the three gambles that shaped it. Frank starts with an admission that surprises people: he is known for dementia research and holds no qualification in it. What he does have is a first year at Edinburgh covering biology, chemistry, physics and maths, a Cambridge PhD building roughly 200 plasmids from scratch with no kits, and a willingness to move fields when the opportunity looked better than the plan. Gamble one took him to Bristol to work on a neurotrophic factor receptor he knew nothing about, hired purely for his DNA skills. Gamble two was a move to Edinburgh so his wife could take her dream job, which produced the textbook findings that got him his own group at St Andrews. Gamble three arrived as an email from a physicist asking whether anyone fancied doing weird things with lasers, and turned into a twenty year run through photonics, optical gene delivery and commercial microscopes. The second half is what he would pass on: make room for the left field experiment even when the homogenising pull of AI makes it harder to justify, walk away from collaborators who open with what is in it for them, get involved in pooled national initiatives, and stop treating early career researchers as stepping stones on someone else's route up.https://www.dementiaresearcher.nihr.ac.uk/blog-an-academic-career-then-and-now/Professor Frank Gunn-Moore is an academic and researcher in neurodegeneration and dementia research at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His group has advanced understanding of the early cellular and biochemical mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease, including links between mitochondrial and synaptic dysfunction, and has pioneered new models including the identification of Alzheimer’s-like pathology in cetaceans. His research has also identified potential therapeutic targets, novel signalling pathways such as FRMD6/Willin in the Hippo pathway, and contributed to patented optical technologies developed with industry. He has published over 150 research papers across biology, chemistry and physics, reflecting the interdisciplinary breadth of his work.Find Frank on LinkedInLeave 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