Sally Cowley is head and cofounder, with William James, of the James and Lillian Martin Centre for Stem Cell Research at the University of Oxford. There, she studies and is harnessing the potential of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells derived from individuals with genetic disease. Such cells offer a hugely exciting opportunity to model human diseases in the laboratory, particularly neurological conditions for which biosamples are generally unavailable until after death. In collaboration with the Oxford Parkinson’s Disease (PD) Centre and the EU IMI consortium StemBANCC, she generated a world-class panel of  over 200 iPS cell lines from people with PD to study the early cellular pathology of the disorder. She has pioneered efficient methodologies for producing macrophages and supportive microglial cells from iPS cells. She has also interrogated the role of genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease and the PD-associated genes alpha-synuclein and LRRK2 in macrophages and microglia.