Prof Suvankar Pal

Suvankar Pal is Professor of Neurodegenerative Disorders and Clinical Trials and Honorary Consultant Neurologist.  He is co-lead investigator of the UK wide innovative multi-arm multi-stage MND-SMART trial, the Scottish Motor Neuron Disease Register (CARE-MND), a Deputy Director at the Anne Rowling Clinic, Co-Investigator of the UK Dementia Research Institute, and Clinical Lead for Neurology at NHS Forth Valley. His clinical and research interests are focused on improving outcomes for people with neurodegenerative disorders, including accelerating early and accurate diagnoses, evaluating atypical presentations, leading population-based disease registries for longitudinal deep clinical phenotyping, digital and wet lab biomarker development, and delivery of innovative clinical trials.

Suvankar graduated in Neurosciences and Medicine with Distinction in Clinical Sciences from King’s College London in 2001, completed basic medical training at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School (Hammersmith Hospital and National Hospital for Neurology), and Royal Free Hospital, before completing his Doctoral research investigating novel molecular diagnostic strategies in Prion disease and supporting recruitment to the PRION1 trial at the MRC Prion Unit Institute of Neurology UCL. He completed higher specialist training in neurology in Edinburgh and was appointed to a Consultant Neurologist position in 2011 at NHS Forth Valley and the University of Edinburgh. He was awarded an inaugural NHS Scotland Research Fellowship in 2012, and appointed to a Clinical Senior Lecturer Position at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences in 2018. He was awarded a Personal Chair in Neurodegenerative Disorders and Clinical Trials at the University of Edinburgh in 2023 and holds an Honorary Professorship at the MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL where he co-chairs the ACORD Fellows Academy.

Suvankar works as part of inter-disciplinary teams assessing people living with a range of neurodegenerative disorders in the clinic including with motor neuron disease and early onset cognitive disorders.