Dr Alexandra Zirra

Profile

I am a doctor and a PhD student under the supervision of Prof Alastair Noyce, Prof Charles Marshall and Dr Maria Teresa Perinan, at Queen Mary University of London. I am studying Parkinson’s Disease Dementia in a diverse population, the East London Parkinson’s disease study. I am interested in identifying clinical and biological determinants of dementia in Parkinson’s disease in diverse populations.

I am from Romania, and I graduated from the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Bucharest in 2013. I then completed the Clinical Neuroscience MSc at University College London in 2014. My molecular biology project, undertaken in the Jernej Ule group, focused on regulation of messenger RNA in neurodegeneration. This project gave rise to my interest in transcriptomics.

From 2016 until 2020 I undertook clinical training at Guys and St Thomas’ Hospital Trust and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, followed by Internal Medical Training at Royal London Hospital and Queen’s Hospital Romford.

During 2021-2022 I completed a Clinical Fellowship in Movement Disorders under the supervision of Prof Alastair Noyce at Queen Mary University of London. This allowed me to gain skills in clinical research and epidemiology.

In 2023, I started my PhD on Parkinson’s disease dementia. During this, I also explored genomic analysis through the Global Parkinson’s Genetics Program (GP2), and I am currently the East Europe GP2 Trainee representative.

Research

Research Interests:

My research interests are in Parkinson’s disease dementia epidemiology, transcriptomic and genomic determinants.