St Hugh’s Fellow in Medicine, Dr Damian Jenkins MBE, has recently been awarded the prestigious Colt Prize by the Royal Society of Medicine. The award is made at the Colt Foundation Meeting, an event which invites medical researchers at the forefront of their field, in areas related to military medicine. Dr Jenkins was selected from a shortlist of six finalists, following his presentation on the role of the blood-brain barrier in the inflammatory response to traumatic brain injury.

Damian has been at St Hugh’s since he came up as an undergraduate to read medicine in 2000. Qualifying in 2006, he has since worked across the world, serving as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps, where he gained invaluable experience informing his current research specialism. He now works in neurology at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences in the laboratory of Dr Gabriele de Luca. Damian’s research focuses on neurodegeneration, in particular, identifying neuronal and glial targets for the treatment of brain injury and dementia.