Colin Masters, MD is the Laureate Professor of Dementia Research and Head of the Neurodegeneration Division at The Florey Institute, The University of Melbourne and a consultant at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Dr. Masters has focused his career on research in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases, including Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. His work over the last 35 years is widely acknowledged as having had a major influence on Alzheimer’s disease research world-wide, particularly the collaborative studies conducted with Konrad Beyreuther in which they discovered the proteolytic neuronal origin of the Aβ amyloid protein which causes Alzheimer’s disease. This work has led to the continued development of diagnostics and therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease. More recently, his focus has been on describing the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease as a necessary preparatory step for therapeutic disease modification.

His achievements have been recognized by the receipt of many international awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in Alzheimer’s Disease Research from the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Grand Hamdan International Award for Medical Sciences in the field of Molecular and Cellular Pathology of Neurological Disorders.