Professor Ruth Itzhaki is a Visiting Professorial Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing.

Professor Itzhaki is a research scientist. She graduated as a physicist, then carried out research for an MSc and PhD in Biophysics - all London University degrees.

She subsequently moved to Cambridge, to the Department of Radiotherapeutics, holding a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research and the Wheldale-Onslow Memorial Fellowship at Newnham College, Cambridge University. Her next move was to Manchester where she worked in the Paterson Laboratories (cancer research), and then in the University of Manchester.

Her research topics have been diverse, most recently Alzheimer's disease, especially, the role of viruses acting with a genetic factor in dementia, and the role of the genetic factor APOE in determining susceptibility to infection or outcome of infection by pathogens.

For the virus work, she won an Investigator award from The Lancet, a Wellcome Trust Innovative award, two Olympus Foundation awards, an Alzheimer's Research Forum award and a Manchester City Council award. She is now an emeritus professor at Manchester University but lives in Oxford.  

She has recently finished writing a book, to be called Honour and Shame: Mistreatment and Violence against Women in developing Countries”, which will be published before the end of 2025.