Dorina Cadar is Professor of Ageing and Behavioural Science at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), where she serves as Deputy Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange and Deputy Director of the Centre for Dementia Studies. She is also the founder and Director of the Cognitive Epidemiology, Dementia, and Ageing Research (CEDAR) lab, which focuses on the role of biopsychosocial factors in cognitive ageing, cerebrovascular disease and dementia risk. Her research seeks to understand why some individuals remain cognitively resilient despite accumulating risk factors for dementia, and how modifiable factors across the life course can help preserve cognitive health and prevent or delay dementia. Her work focuses particularly on the interplay between cardiovascular and metabolic health, systemic inflammation, lifestyle behaviours, psychosocial factors and cognitive reserve in shaping trajectories of cognitive ageing and dementia risk.

Professor Cadar has extensive expertise in longitudinal population-based research, cognitive epidemiology and the investigation of cardiovascular, metabolic, behavioural and psychosocial determinants of cognitive ageing and dementia. Her research examines how these factors interact across the life course to influence cognitive trajectories, resilience and vulnerability to dementia. Through interdisciplinary collaborations, she is integrating population-level evidence with biological and clinical markers, neuroimaging and advanced analytical approaches to investigate the vascular, inflammatory and metabolic mechanisms underlying brain resilience and identify opportunities for earlier, more targeted dementia prevention.

Professor Cadar has secured research funding as Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator from major national and international funders, including the Medical Research Council, NIHR, Alzheimer's Society, Alzheimer's Research UK, ESRC, BBSRC, the Department of Health and Social Care and the UK Health Security Agency. Her research programmes have addressed cognitive reserve, cognitive frailty, social inequalities in dementia risk, and the cognitive and psychosocial consequences of major health challenges, including COVID-19. She leads and contributes to multidisciplinary collaborations spanning epidemiology, clinical neuroscience, psychology and public health.

Before joining BSMS, Professor Cadar held an MRC Career Development Fellowship at University College London (UCL), where she also undertook postdoctoral research supported by the Alzheimer's Society, ESRC and the US National Institute on Aging. She completed her MRC-funded PhD at UCL, investigating the role of lifestyle behaviours in cognitive ageing, and previously obtained an MSc in Clinical Neuroscience from the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London, where her research focused on neuroimaging approaches to measuring brain atrophy in mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

Professor Cadar has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles in leading international journals, including JAMA Psychiatry, Neurology, The British Journal of Psychiatry, Brain, Behaviour, and Immunity, Translational Psychiatry and the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. She is an Associate Editor of BMC Psychiatry and Brain Sciences and contributes to national and international research networks in ageing, dementia and population health.

Her overarching research aim is to understand why some individuals maintain cognitive health despite accumulating vascular, metabolic and other dementia-related risks, and to translate this knowledge into more personalised, equitable and effective strategies for preserving brain health and preventing dementia.