School members and previous winners of the award include Professor Christian Mallen in 2011, Dr Greg Irving in 2013, Dr Helen Atherton in 2014, Dr Clare Taylor in 2015 and Dr Kamal Mahtani in 2016.
The board particularly liked the amount of funding that I secured since finishing my PhD and the collaborations that I have started to develop. I've begun working with teams internationally in Asia and Australia. But I think the board also ultimately recognised my passion and dedication for primary care and dementia care research and I hope my long term potential.
- Dr Nathan Davies
How will the award enable future research opportunities?
I'm going to travel to Sri Lanka to visit Prof Athula Sumanthipala (Keele University) and his team. I will conduct a series of workshops focusing on dementia and older adults for primary care practitioners, members of the ministry of health and family carers of people with dementia. This will also allow for bi-directional learning and establish future collaborations and avenues of work between the U.K. and Sri Lanka.
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How do you hope this will help your career ambitions and plans for the future?
I hope this award will allow me to strengthen my collaborations internationally, but also highlight the work I do and develop further links across primary care in the UK. I have received emails from GPs in the UK interested in my work and this is fantastic.
My SPCR Fellowship ends later this year and I have secured a prestigious Alzheimer's Society Fellowship which I am very excited about. I am going to continue with my work on dementia and end of life care. My new Fellowship will be the development and a feasibility study of a decision aid for family carers of someone with dementia at the end of life. There are few trials in dementia end of life care and this is a field I am keen to work with more. We are lucky the SPCR offers a great opportunity to link with other universities and this is something I am keen to continue.