Julie's research focuses upon identifying and understanding genes which increase the risk of developing complex psychological and neurodegenerative disorders. These include Alzheimer’s disease, developmental dyslexia and schizophrenia.

She joined the McGuffin/Owen group in 1991 working on the genetics of schizophrenia. Having produced a number of notable papers, she moved focus to Alzheimer’s disease, which has remained her main research interest ever since.

Throughout her career she has recognized the importance of working collaboratively and has contributed to or led a number of successful and long standing consortia. She has attracted research funding amounting to several millions of pounds from major grant funders and has published widely in top scientific Journals (e.g., Science, Nature Genetics, Lancet). Recently, she published evidence for the first new susceptibility genes for Alzheimer’s disease for 17 years (Harold et. al. (2009), Nat. Genet., 41(10): 1088-93), identifying two new susceptibility genes for AD; CLU and PICALM from a study involving over 20,000 subjects from Europe and the USA . When these results were combined with a second genome-wide association study published alongside (Lambert et al. (2009), Nat. Genet., 41(10): 1094-9) a third gene was confirmed (CR1). These findings were highlighted by Time Magazine as one of the ten most important medical breakthroughs of 2009. Since several other susceptibility genes have been identified which together are pin pointing several potential pathways to disease, many of which are novel.