Alan Thomas PhD

Alan Thomas is Professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist at Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust. He entered the University at St Andrews where he intercalated and was awarded a first-class honours degree in Experimental Pathology. He went on to complete medicine at Manchester University and entered psychiatry training. After a move to the North East of England, he began neuropathology studies whilst completing his Royal College Membership and then was appointed as a Lecturer at Newcastle University whilst completing his PhD in Vascular Neuropathology. He was appointed Senior Lecturer in 2002 and Professor in 2013. He has been working half-time in the NHS in Gateshead where he runs a community team and covers a couple of general practices, seeing patients with the full range of psychiatric disorders encountered in older people.

His main research interests are in late-life depression, especially its neurobiology, in Lewy body disease, and in post-mortem research. He is Clinical Director of Newcastle University’s Human Brain Tissue Resource (“Brain Bank”) and Director of the Brains for Dementia Research network.