Rate My Professor Clive Ballard

Clive Ballard is Professor of Age-Related Diseases at the University of Exeter Medical School. A psychiatrist by training, he specialises in the psychiatry of older adults with a primary focus on dementia. He earned his medical degree from the University of Leicester in 1987 and completed psychiatry training at the University of Birmingham, where he obtained an MD on neuropsychiatric symptoms in dementia. He later held positions including MRC clinical fellow and senior lecturer at Newcastle University before joining King’s College London in 2003 as Professor of Age-Related Diseases, where he directed the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Unit for Dementia and co-directed the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases. From 2003 to 2013 he served as director of research at the Alzheimer’s Society. In 2016 he joined the University of Exeter as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of the Medical School and has continued in senior leadership roles including interim deputy pro-vice-chancellor and dean.

Ballard’s research encompasses treatment of dementia with Lewy bodies and Parkinson’s disease dementia, harms associated with antipsychotic medications, benefits of non-pharmacological interventions for agitation, and dementia prevention through the PROTECT online platform. He has published more than 600 scientific papers with an h-index exceeding 115 and over 55,000 citations. In 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. Key contributions include clinical trials on pimavanserin, person-centred care training that reduced antipsychotic use in care homes, and the Lancet Commission on dementia prevention.