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Profile – Dr David Cash, University College London

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05/07/2023

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Dr David Cash

Name:

Dr David Cash

Job title:

Principle Research Fellow and chair (2023) of the ISTAART Neuroimaging PIA

Place of work / study:

UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology

Area of Research:

Neuroimaging

How is your work funded?

Combination of UKRI funding and Alzheimer’s charities

Tell us a little about yourself:

I am a biomedical engineer that has worked predominantly in imaging – never let me near your wet lab if you like your glassware. My PhD involved image guided liver surgery at Vanderbilt University, and in 2005, I picked up and moved from the southern United States to London to do a post-doc. That didn’t work out well, but it led me to an opportunity to get involved in Alzheimer’s disease trials, which eventually took me back to academia in 2011. When I’m not doing research with medical images, I’m traipsing around London with my wife and kids and watching various sport.

Tell us a fun fact about yourself:

I was music director of a college radio station in Nashville while getting my PhD

Why did you choose to work in dementia?

It actually happened while working in industry. When working on clinical trials, I got a better sense of the devastation that the disease was causing to those suffering with dementia and their loved ones, as well as how the long trajectory of the disease created such challenges to work towards a cure.

What single piece of advice would you give to an early career researcher?

Don’t get paralysed when taking a difficult decision – rarely is there one choice that is completely right and one that is completely wrong. And not taking a decision can end up being a worse result than either.

What book are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?

Fall; or, Dodge In Hell by Neil Stephenson – He’s one of my favourite authors for the worlds he builds with such detail. Even though it is technically a sequel it really stands on its own and is a speculative fiction delving in to the connectome. That and various books on statistics.