Dr Ash Venkataraman is a clinician-scientist specialising in brain health, neuroimaging, and biomarker-driven translation in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, working at the interface of academia, healthcare systems, and pharma/biotech.

He is an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer at King’s College London and an Honorary Consultant in the pioneering Brain Health Clinic at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM). He also is the Early Biomarkers Theme Lead at the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Brain Health, and leads the Brain Health Imaging Group within the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing.

His work focuses on developing and translating AI-enabled neuroimaging and biomarker tools into real-world clinical use, with the aim of improving diagnosis, prognosis, patient stratification, and trial readiness in dementia.

A central component of this work is the SLaM Image Bank, a large-scale real-world platform linking brain MRI with longitudinal clinical data, purpose-built to support machine learning, clinical decision support, and regulator-relevant evidence generation alongside deploying novel technologies for patients with cognitive impairment.

His research spans neuroimaging (MRI, PET, ultra-low-field MRI), biomarkers, neuropsychopharmacology, and disease mechanisms, with prior focus on Alzheimer’s cellular pathology including amyloid, cellular stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, synaptic integrity, and astrocytic processes, and how these relate to clinical expression and progression.

Dr Venkataraman has published in leading journals including Science Translational Medicine, Molecular Psychiatry, and Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy, and his work has been featured widely in national and international media. He has extensive experience collaborating with pharma, biotech, and imaging technology companies, contributing to translational programmes that bridge discovery science with clinical deployment.

Prior to his current roles, he was an Alzheimer’s Society Clinical Research Training Fellow at Imperial College London and the UK Dementia Research Institute. His PhD focused on PET and MRI imaging of the cellular phase of Alzheimer’s disease, for which he received the AD/PD Junior Faculty Award. He previously held an Alzheimer’s Research UK Clinical Fellowship at the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit, Imperial College London.

He is a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and trained through the NIHR Academic Clinical Fellowship and Academic Foundation Programme, having graduated from University College London Medical School.

Please see his personal website for more information.

Research interests

• Brain Health, Neuroimaging & Biomarkers
• Alzheimer’s & Dementia
• Biotech & Real-World Translational Interface
• Psychiatry & Neurology