Bangladeshi-origin neurologist to lead UK’s Parkinson’s research centre

Bangladeshi-origin neurologist Miratul Muqit has been appointed as the inaugural director of the United Kingdom's National Parkinson's Research Centre, a flagship initiative under the UK Dementia Research Institute.

Currently, he is serving as a professor of experimental neurology and a consultant neurologist at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

Hailing from Sylhet's Habiganj, Muqit's parents, who migrated from Bangladesh to the UK in the 1960s, both served in the National Health Service.

Muqit studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He subsequently won a Kennedy Scholarship to attend Harvard University, before completing PhD studies at University College London.

He then received an FRCP from London.

Muqit is also one of very few Bangladeshis to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (the UK's National Academy of Medicine).

"It is an absolute honour to lead the new UK DRI Parkinson's Research Centre in partnership with Parkinson's UK," Muqit said.

He said his vision was to build a centre fully integrated with people with Parkinson's, which will become a leading centre for discovery science and translation that will deliver new ideas for better diagnosing and treating Parkinson's in the future.