Professor Joanna Wardlaw, CBE, MD, FRSE, FMedSci, is Professor of Applied Neuroimaging at the University of Edinburgh, Foundation Chair in the UK Dementia Research Institute, and Consultant Neuroradiologist for NHS Lothian. Her work focuses on understanding the brain and its blood supply, and on treatments to improve blood flow to the brain, including thrombolytic drugs that are now in routine use to treat stroke, and more recently on treatments for small vessel disease and dementia. Working with many colleagues, she has been instrumental in advancing understanding of the causes of small vessel disease and is now testing possible treatments in clinical trials. She has published over 700 papers, set up national research imaging facilities, co-ordinated international research networks, and advanced stroke care worldwide. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, she was the first woman to be awarded the American Heart Association’s Feinberg Award for Clinical Advances in Stroke in 2018, received the European Stroke Organisation President’s Award (2017), the Karolinska Stroke Award (2018), and received a CBE for services to Medicine and Neuroscience in 2016, a high honor in the UK.