Professor Joanna Wardlaw receives the European Stroke Organisation Presidential Award 2017

Professor Joanna Wardlaw (Professor of Applied Neuroimaging and Honorary Consultant Neuroradiologist, University of Edinburgh) has been honoured with the Presidential Award, at the European Stroke Conference on 16-18 May 2017, in Prague. This is fantastic international recognition of Joanna's contribution to stroke research - congratulations!

Professor Wardlaw has said “This award is for all the people who have ever worked together with me to improve the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cerebrovascular disease. Such improvements rely on collaboration and contributions from many many people, especially those at risk of, or who have already suffered, from stroke and its other effects on the brain. It is a great honour to receive the award.”

Joanna initiated one of the first randomised controlled trials of intra-arterial thrombolysis in acute ischaemic stroke in 1990 and has published and regularly updated the Cochrane Collaboration Systematic Review of available evidence on thrombolysis in ischaemic stroke since 1992. She has worked on many multicentre RCTs as Imaging lead, steering committee member or UK lead (IST-3, ENOS, PODCAST, Novartis Octreotide trials, SITS-MOST and MAST-Italy). Professor Wardlaw has led UK NIHR-commissioned projects on cost effective use of diagnostic imaging in stroke treatment and prevention, whose results have been cited in stroke care guidelines worldwide, therby having impact on patient care.

In 1997, Joanna Wardlaw established and still lead the Brain Research Imaging Centre, University of Edinburgh, and is now part of the SINAPSE collaboration, a joint effort of the major Universities across Scotland. More recently Joanna developed a research programme into the causes and effects of small vessel disease (SVD) on the brain, in particular the role of the blood brain barrier (BBB) failure with ageing and its relationship with lacunar stroke and dementia. This has resulted in several high profile publications most recently Neuroimaging Standards for Small Vessel Disease and its contribution to ageing and neurodegeneration (STRIVE) published in Lancet Neurology 2013.

Joanna has published more than 550 papers including in high imapct journals, which have attracted in excess of 13,000 citations.