Zane Jaunmuktane

Department of Neuropathology, The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK; Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, London, UK

Zane Jaunmuktane, MD, FEBP, EFN, FRCPath, is an Associate Professor and Honorary Consultant Neuropathologist at the University College London and the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. Dr Jaunmuktane graduated from Rīga Stradiņš University in 2006, followed by the completion of general histopathology training there in 2010. That same year, she passed the European examination and became a Fellow of the European Board of Pathology.

In 2011, she began her Diagnostic Neuropathology training at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, UK. In 2014, she become a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists and a European Fellow of Neuropathology.

Since 2017, Dr Jaunmuktane has worked as an academic neuropathologist in the Division of Neuropathology, NHNN and the Queen Square Brain Bank, Department of Clinical and Movement Neurosciences, UCL, with research interests in neurodegenerative diseases and molecular neuro-oncology. In 2015, she and her colleagues were the first to demonstrate human transmission of amyloid-beta, one of the key misfolded peptides involved in neurodegeneration— a discovery that marked a paradigm shift in understanding the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, Dr Jaunmuktane leads a research group funded by Aligning Science Across Parkinson's (ASAP) and the Michael J. Fox Foundation, focusing on machine-learning-based approaches to pathology assessment and employing spatial transcriptomics to explore the factors influencing Parkinson’s disease progression.

Since 2023, she has served as Secretary General of Euro-CNS, the European Confederation of Neuropathological Societies, and as Academic Chair of the British Neuropathological Society. She is also on the editorial board of Acta Neuropathologica and serves as Executive Editor for Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology, two leading journals in the field.