Christos Proukakis, BM BCh, PhD, studied medicine at Cambridge and Oxford, with genetics lab research experience both as an undergraduate and as a visiting student at Johns Hopkins. After his general higher medical training, he completed a PhD on hereditary spastic paraplegia at University College London (UCL), accompanied by clinical studies in the Ohio Amish, which contributed to the identification of genes for several neurological conditions. After his higher training in neurology at Queen Square and other London hospitals, he joined the UCL Institute of Neurology again, where he is now a clinical Associate Professor, and honorary consultant neurologist at the Royal Free London NHS Trust. His research interest is the genetics of synucleinopathies (Parkinson's disease and related disorders), particularly the role of somatic mutations. His group has provided the first evidence of somatic mutations (CNVs) in synucleinopathies using fluorescent in situ hybridization and single cell sequencing.