Marion McMurdo

Professor and Head of Ageing and Health at the University of Dundee and a consultant geriatrician. She leads a multidisciplinary team of researchers examining the role of exercise, physical activity and nutrition in sarcopenia and age-related functional decline. She is renowned for a highly successful track record in completing large clinical trials in frail older populations and has published more than 200 peer reviewed publications.

She was appointed as UK Chair of the National Institute for Health Research Clinical Network on Ageing in 2009.

With Miss Dorothy Dobson, she co-founded of D D Developments Ltd, a University of Dundee not-for-profit organisation which provides evidence-based exercise classes for older people throughout the UK.

She is an external tutor to WHO/United Nations International Institute on Ageing in Malta, and an international collaborating partner with the National Initiative on Care of the Elderly (NICE) with the Canadian government.

She has won a number of accolades, including the Lady Illingworth Prize in 2001 (an award made to the UK clinician considered to have made the greatest contribution to improving the quality of life of older people through research) and in 2005 she was identified by the British Medical Association as one of 14 leading UK academic role models. A firm believer in good communication, she delivers regular free lectures to packed halls of older people around the UK. In 2011 she won the Ian Stevenson award for excellence in public engagement with science. A BMA report on the role of the clinical academic in 2014 recognised her as an inspirational academic role model.