Professor Karen Morrison’s long career as a clinical academic research scientist has taken her from Yale, USA, to the Universities of Oxford, Birmingham, Southampton and most recently Queen’s University Belfast. She is an internationally recognised expert in molecular genetic and clinical aspects of neurodegenerative diseases, with particular focus on motor neurone disease/amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, MND/ALS.

She was awarded an Open Scholarship to Cambridge University to study Medical Sciences and completed her Medicine BMBCh degree at Oxford University, where she achieved top place in finals. Her first research post, in 1988, was in the laboratory of Dr Steve Reeders at Yale University, USA, where she published the PCR cycling protocol (subsequently termed ‘touch down PCR’ ) that led to her cloning the gene that encodes a portion of the alpha 3 chain of type IV collagen, the target of autoantibodies in Goodpasture syndrome and a protein that is also involved in autosomal dominant Alport syndrome.

 She returned to Oxford for her D.Phil. studies, supervised by Prof Kay Davies, on molecular genetic studies in the childhood onset motor nerve disorder of spinal muscular atrophy and then led her first independent research laboratory group investigating molecular mechanisms in adult motor neurone disease in the Institute of Molecular Medicine in Oxford, funded by the Wellcome Trust alongside completing clinical training as a consultant neurologist. She held the Bloomer Professorship of Neurology at the University of Birmingham from 1999 – 2016, where she established the Molecular Neurology Laboratory Research Group and developed the internationally recognised Birmingham Motor Neurone Disease Care and Research Centre with her colleague Dr Hardev Pall.

In the last decade she has held leadership roles in medical and life sciences education, most recently at Queen’s University Belfast, as Professor of Neurology and Dean of Education in the Faculty of Medicine, Health & Life Sciences, alongside working as a consultant neurologist in the Belfast Trust, prior to her retirement in November 2024.

Karen continues in various charitable roles, including as Chair of the Research Committee of the Progressive Supranuclear Palsy Association UK and as a Board member of SistersIN, a charity that supports girls in N. Ireland to discover their talents and broaden their horizons in considering potential careers.