Dr Tim Wilkinson

Senior Clinical Research Fellow & Consultant Neurologist

Biography

Background

I am a Senior Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Neurologist at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh. 

I was awarded an MRC Clinical Research Training Fellowship to undertake a PhD in dementia epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh, entitled "Predicting Dementia: insights from routinely-collected healthcare data".  During my PhD, I developed algorithms to identify dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases for UK Biobank, and co-created the SAIL Dementia e-Cohort, a 'virtual' cohort created from Welsh routine data, designed to facilitate epidemiological dementia research. 

Following my PhD, I was awarded a Scottish Clinical Research Excellence Development Scheme (SCREDS) clinical lectureship whilst completing my neurology clinical training. On completion of training, I undertook a combined clinical and research fellowship in Cognitive and Movement Disorders at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, University of Toronto. During this fellowship, I became increasingly interested in vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and clinical trials of dementia.

In 2023, I returned to the University of Edinburgh, joining Prof Joanna Wardlaw's group within the Row Fogo Centre for Research into Ageing and the Brain. In 2025, I was awarded an NRS Career Researcher Fellowship and a UK Dementia Trials Network Fellowship. Clinically, I work as a consultant neurologist in NHS Fife, where I run cognitive, movement disorders and general neurology clinics.

My research focuses on vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and its interplay with Alzheimer's disease pathologies, as well as the design and delivery of clinical trials in dementia.

Qualifications

  • 2025: Fellowship of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
  • 2020: PhD Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh
  • 2019: PGDip Epidemiology, LSHTM
  • 2013: MRCP (Edin), Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
  • 2013: MSc Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh
  • 2010: MBChB (Hons), University of Edinburgh
  • 2007: BMedSci(Hons), University of Edinburgh

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Current PhD students supervised

Maija Pyykkönen - PhD

Research summary

My research centres around three main themes:

1. Clinical trials in cognitive disorders and dementia, particularly vascular cognitive impairment.

2. Mixed dementias, in particular how vascular and Alzheimer's disease pathologies interact to contribute to cognitive impairment.

2. The use of routinely-collected health datasets, cohort studies and patient registries to study dementia risk factors and prognosis.

I developed and validated algorithms to identify dementia cases from primary care, hospital admissions and mortality data within UK Biobank and co-created the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage Databank Dementia electronic Cohort (SAIL-DeC), a research-ready cohort comprised of routinely-collected health data for the population of Wales, UK.

 

Publications

PURE is not currently updating fully, so an up to date list of publications is available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Tim-Wilkinson-5 

Current research interests

1. Early phase clinical trials in neurodegenerative diseases. 2. Clinical trials of repurposed drugs for vascular cognitive impairment (LACI-Cog-1) 3. Understanding the prognosis of vascular cognitive impairment and the interplay between Alzheimer's disease and vascular pathologies in determining prognosis.

This article was published on