John O’Brien is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge and an Honorary NHS Consultant within Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust. He has previously trained and worked in Oxford, London, Melbourne and Newcastle. He is a National Institute for Health Research Emeritus Senior Investigator, a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the NIHR National Specialty Lead for Dementia. He is a past recipient of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Lifetime Achievement award in Older People’s Mental Health.

His research interests include the application of neuroimaging and other biomarkers in dementia; dementia with Lewy bodies; the role of vascular factors in dementia and depression and clinical trials. He has published over 650 peer-reviewed papers on these topics and been a member of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), British Association of Psychopharmacology, European Federation of Neurological Sciences and European Stroke Association Dementia Guideline groups.