Professor Jane Alty is a Neurology clinician, researcher and educator. Her work addresses University strategies to build a healthier Tasmania and has national and international impact. Her goal is to transform the brain health of adults in Tasmania and globally - through research to detect the critical earliest stages of degenerative brain disorders, through teaching to improve clnical care, and through community engagement to increase health literacy.
Jane is a clinician researcher at the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre and the School of Medicine, and a Neurology Staff Specialist at the Royal Hobart Hospital (80% at the University and 20% at the hospital). Her inter-disciplinary research focuses on applying Artificial-Intelligence (AI) methods, and other computer science approaches, to solve medical problems. In particular, her research aims to develop digital biomarkers that will help with early detection, accurate monitoring and prevention of Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer's disease – the two most common neurodegenerative disorders. She has a particular interest in developing population-level low-cost tests that help detect the prodromal phase of Parkinson’s, (including REM sleep behaviour disorder [iRBD]) and the pre-clinical phase of Alzheimer’s – as these phases offer the best chance for interventions aimed at stopping further progression.
She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal papers, 3 text books and 2 book chapters. Her work has > 2700 citations and h index 29.
Jane is from the UK and grew up in the north of England, in Lancashire. She qualified in Medicine and Surgery from the University of Cambridge, UK. She was awarded a Distinction in the final exams and the University of Cambridge Lewin Prize for the highest marks of her year in the surgical examinations.
She completed 4 years of medical training in Cambridge, Leeds, Manchester and London and, after passing her professional postgraduate physician exams (being awarded Membership of the Royal College of Physicians, London), she undertook 5 years of specialist neurology training in Leeds and York. She also completed a 6-month Movement Disorders Fellowship at Monash Medical Centre, Melbourne in 2007 and also took time out of her clinical neurology training to complete a 2-year period of AI-neuroscience research in Parkinson’s at the University of York; she was subsequently conferred a Doctorate of Medicine (MD) for her research thesis on “Objective evaluation of Parkinson’s disease bradykinesia”. Her research made significant contributions to the commercialization of three medical devices (that have since been used in phase 3 clinical trials and also in clinical monitoring) and Jane was appointed as Medical Advisor the subsequent spin out company, ClearSky Medical Diagnostics.
In 2013, Jane was appointed Consultant Neurologist at the Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust, a tertiary referral neurosciences centre that serves about 1 milliion people in the north of England, and led specialist clinics in complex Parkinson’s disease, tremor, functional movement disorders and dystonia, including administering botulinum toxin injections and referral for advanced therapies such as deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery, intrajejunal levodopa (Duodopa) and subcutaneous apomorphine infusions. She was the Movemet Disorders lead researcher for the Yorkshire Brain Research Centre and local Principal Investigator for several clinical trials in Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, leading her team to be the highest recruiting centre in the UK for a complex phase 3 Parkinson's drug trial. In her clinical roles as a Neurologist, Jane won a number of national prizes for quality improvement projects, local Clinical Excellence Awards, as well as international awards for research innovations and national patient safety awards.
In January 2019, Jane was actively recruited to the Univeirsty of Tasmania (UTAS) as an academic neurologist. She is now the Director of the ISLAND Cognitive Clinic, a one-stop interdisciplinary research cognitive clinic that provides a State-wide diagnostic service for adults with cognitive symptoms in Tasmania. She also runs a specialist Parkinson’s disease and movement disorders clinic at the Royal Hobart Hospital. She is a member of the Steering Committee for The ISLAND Project, the largest dementia prevention study in the world with >14,000 participants and leads several other research projects that aim to apply AI technologies for the early detection and precise monitoring of neurodegenerative disorders.
In 2020, she was awarded a 5-year Australian Governmental Nataional Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Ideas grant (2021-25; CIA ~$0.9Million) to develop new digital biomarkers of pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease and now leads the TAS Test project, working with an interdisciplinary group of researchers in neuroscience, computer science and psychology - to develop a home-based tool to detect dementia risk. She was awarded a 3-year Major Project Grant by the Royal Hobart Hospital Research Foundation (2022-24; CIA ~$450k) and leads a team of researchers and clinicians to develop a mobile phone TapTalk app for a 2-minute cognitive screening in clinical and research settings. She was awarded a second NHMRC Ideas grant (2024-28; CIA ~$1.01 Million) to investigate face and eye movement changes in prodromal Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease through the BRAIN (Bringing AI into Neurological assessments) Project. She also co-led the Parkinsons's MOOC (massive open online course) program of free online education - that has reached more than 25,000 people globally acorss 170 countries.
She is also Co-CI on a number of other research grants including a ~$2Million MRFF grant (CIA Prof Lim) to develop online cognitive test platforms and a $2.9 Million MRFF grant (CIA Prof Callisaya) to implement specialist Parkinson's care (ParkinsonNet model) in rural Australia via networks of allied health clinicians.
Jane was promoted to Associate Professor of Neurology in January 2022 and to Professor of Neurology in January 2025. In 2023, Jane won the Vice Chancellors Trailblazing Research award and was a finalist in the Tasmanian STEM awards.
Memberships
Movement Disorders Society of Australia and New Zealand (MDSANZ)
International Parkinson's disease and Movement Disorders Society (MDS)
Global Parkinsons Genetics Program (GP2)
Royal College of Physicians, London, UK (RCP)
Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP)
Australian and New Zealand Association of Neurologists (ANZAN)
Association of British Neurologists (ABN)
Australasian Cognitive Neurology Association (ACNA)
Functional Neurological Disorders Society (FNDS)
Australian Dementia Network (ADNeT)
Administrative roles and service to Profession
Director and founding member of the National Parkinsons Alliance (NPA)
Elected Secretary of the Australasian Cognitive Neurology Association (ACNA)
Elected academic staff member on the University of Tasmania Academic Senate
Associate Editor of Nature Parkinson's Journal (npj)
Associate Editor of BMC Neurology
Founding Member of the National Parkinson's Alliance Taskforce
Member of the steering committee for the ISLAND Project
