Following his PhD, Hardy did
postdoctoral research at the MRC Neuropathogenesis Unit in
Newcastle upon Tyne, England and then further postdoctoral work at the Swedish Brain Bank in
Umeå, Sweden where he started to work on
Alzheimer's disease. He became Associate Professor in 1989 and then took the Pfeiffer Endowed Chair of Alzheimer's Research at the
University of South Florida, in
Tampa in 1992. In 1996 he moved to
Mayo Clinic in
Jacksonville, Florida, as Consultant and Professor of
Neuroscience. He became Chair of Neuroscience in 2000 and moved to
National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, Maryland, as Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics in 2001. In 2007 he took up the Chair of Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease at the
Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies,
University College London. On 29 November 2015, he was awarded the
Breakthrough Prize. In 2018, Hardy, along with
Christian Haass,
Bart De Strooper and
Michel Goedert, received the
Brain Prize for "groundbreaking research on the genetic and molecular basis of Alzheimer's disease." ==Awards and honours==