Our People

Dr Barbara Sarkany

Fellow, Junior Research Fellow

Postdoctoral Research Assistant in Neural Circuits

Department of Pharmacology

BSc, MSc Debrecen, DPhil Oxford

Barbara completed a BSc in Biology. As an undergraduate student, she explored the effect of antifungal drug combinations on biofilm formation of Candida parapsilosis. She completed an MSc in Molecular Biology at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, where she examined the role of protein dynamics in synaptic plasticity and learned basic molecular biology methods. Barbara wanted to gain extensive knowledge in neuroscience and understand the process of memory formation; therefore, she applied for an Erasmus+ scholarship. As an exchange student in the laboratory of Dr Tim Viney in the Department of Pharmacology, Oxford, she investigated the distribution of pathological tau proteins in the brains of a mouse tauopathy model, and tested how these proteins affected spatial memory processes and in vivo neuronal activity. She also carried out collaborative research at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungary, where she investigated neuronal subpopulations containing tau tangles in the human brain.

She completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford, funded by the Alzheimer’s Society, UK. Her project focused on the role of the thalamus in different tauopathies. Barbara identified vulnerable neuronal cell populations in Alzheimer’s disease, described the subcellular localisation of pathological tau protein in the human brain, and proposed novel routes for the propagation of pathological tau. Currently, she is investigating the vulnerability of specific thalamic nuclei in different tauopathies using different molecular markers.