Javier Alegre-Abarrategui combines academic work as Clinical Reader in Neuropathology and Director of Neuropathology of the MS & PD Tissue Bank in the Department of Brain Sciences at Imperial College and clinical work as Consultant Neuropathologist at Charing Cross Hospital and University College London Hospitals (Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Department of Neuropathology). A Neurologist and Neuropathologist by training, he previously worked at the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford. He’s research focused on genetically-defined forms of PD, the use of human genomic constructs for animal and in vitro functional modelling and autophagy. He has pioneered the development of novel tools to detect in situ early protein aggregates such as alpha-synuclein oligomers in human brain and a novel assay to visualise seeding activity in situ. He is applying these tools to the dissection of the initial pathogenic processes in PD and Alzheimer’s disease, including gene expression pathway alterations linked to the earliest pathological events. He has led a study that has provided a new staging system for the neuropathology of PD incorporating glial alongside neuronal pathology. He directs the provision of Neuropathology for the MS & PD Tissue Bank at the College as well as for academic and clinical colleagues and tissue users and he leads a research portfolio centred on the Tissue Bank specimens. He is looking forward to meeting colleagues from different disciplines interested in developing novel and exciting ideas to use human tissue for research.