I am the head of the Basic and Clinical Neuroscience Department at King’s College London, and Director of the King’s Motor Neuron Disease Care and Research Centre, a facility that includes our ALS clinic and laboratory and clinical research teams. I lead a group focussed on understanding what causes ALS, what might control the age it starts, and how fast it progresses. My centre coordinates several ALS research projects with European and international partners.

Pamela Shaw is a clinician scientist in Neurology and formerly a Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow. Since 1991 she has led a multidisciplinary programme encompassing laboratory, clinical and symptom management research. In 2000 she was appointed as Professor of Neurology & Head of Neuroscience, University of Sheffield and Consultant Neurologist, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, where she established the Sheffield Care and Research Centre for Motor Neurone Disorders. She is Associate Director and Chair of the MND Clinical Studies Group for the UK Dementia and Neurodegenerative Diseases Clinical Research Network (DeNDRoN) and Academic Director of the Neuroscience Directorate at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital. She has received numerous awards and, most recently receiving the honour of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for services to neuroscience.

Prior to her appointment in 1999 as Bloomer Professor of Neurology, University of Birmingham, Karen Morrison held an MRC Training Fellowship and a Wellcome Trust Clinician Scientist Fellowship at the University of Oxford.  She combines basic and clinical research with teaching and clinical neurology, leading a laboratory group investigating molecular genetic mechanisms in the neurodegenerative disorders of motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s disease, which has involved establishing DNA Banks for both conditions.  She directs the Birmingham MND Care and Research Centre at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, caring for patients with MND and with specific interests in familial forms of the disease and running clinical trials.  She teaches on the topics of neurology and genetics on various university courses and is passionate about public engagement, with frequent talks to lay groups, schools and patient charities.

Christopher Shaw is Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London. His early training in General Medicine and Neurology was conducted in New Zealand, moving to Cambridge in 1992 on a Wellcome Trust Fellowship to study Neurobiology. In 1995 he moved to the Institute of Psychiatry. He is Director of the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute and Director of the Centre for Neurodegeneration Research. He is also Co-Lead for the Clinical Neuroscience Clinical Academic Group for King’s Health Partners. His major area of clinical and research interest is in the genetic and molecular basis of motor neurone diseas. He runs a clinic for patients with MND/ALS at King’s College Hospital.