Congratulation to Matt Rouse from the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit (MRC CBU), who has been awarded the 2024 Milo Keynes Prize by the University of Cambridge School of Clinical Medicine, for the outstanding quality of his PhD thesis. Matt’s thesis is titled “Social-semantic knowledge and behavioural changes in frontotemporal dementia”.

Matt said: “I am delighted to have been awarded the 2024 Milo Keynes award. Conducting my PhD has been a truly enjoyable and rewarding experience. I am incredibly grateful to my PhD supervisors , Matt Lambon Ralph, James Rowe and Karalyn Patterson for their invaluable support and guidance over the past four years. I am also hugely thankful to all the patients and caregivers who took part in my studies, making this research possible.”

Milo Keynes FRCS; MB BChir; MD; MChir; DM (Oxford) (9 August 1924 – 18 February 2009) was a General surgeon, medical editor and writer. He was also the Great-grandson of Charles Darwin, and a nephew of John Maynard Keynes. Milo studied at Trinity College before taking up his clinical studies at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. Following this time at St Bart’s, and back in Cambridge as a surgical registrar, Milo took a Nuffield Foundation Medical Fellowship in Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. On returning to the UK, Milo held further positions at St Bart’s as a senior surgical registrar, the Nuffield University of Oxford Department of Surgery and the Radcliffe Infirmary before returning to Cambridge in 1973 as a part-time clinical anatomist.  It was then that Milo became an editor of medical books and developed his career as a writer and historian. On his death, Milo bequeathed a sum to the University in order to establish the Milo Keynes Fund to support prizes for exceptional research.

Matt is continuing his research at the MRC CBU as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Matt Lambon Ralph’s research group.