Prof. David Westaway University of Alberta, Canada

David Westaway is a molecular biologist with a special interest in neurological disorders. He trained as biochemist in London, UK and completed postdoctoral training at the University of California San Francisco. Dr. Westaway started his career in Canada in the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University... read moreof Toronto, where he rose to the rank of full Professor. In 2006 he relocated to Edmonton become the Director of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta. He is appointed in the Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine and is a Canada Research Chair (Tier 1) and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Dr. Westaway's work seeks to understand origins and early events in non-inherited forms of dementia. Recent studies from his laboratory concern the processing of the cellular prion protein - a nodal point in the development of prion diseases and Alzheimer's disease - and the prion-like properties of misfolded forms of the microtubule-associated protein tau.