Neurepiomics 2026
October 5-7, 2026 | San Antonio, TX
Founded by leading researchers, Professors Stéphanie Debette and Sudha Seshadri, this annual event brings together a vibrant global community for an immersive, cross‑disciplinary training experience.
Since 2015, the program has united students, early‑career investigators, and senior scientists across neurology, epidemiology, imaging, bioinformatics, and statistics—building a collaborative network that now spans continents.
At the heart of the workshop is an intensive curriculum designed to empower participants with cutting‑edge expertise. From advanced brain‑imaging techniques to state‑of‑the‑art omics approaches, attendees gain hands‑on exposure to the latest methods shaping the future of vascular and brain‑aging research.
Neurepiomics maintains a strong partnership with the CHARGE Consortium (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology), reinforcing its dedication to large‑scale, team‑science innovation. Each year, the workshop convenes in a different international hub, with past gatherings hosted in Bordeaux, Boston, Paris, Kyoto, Arcachon, San Antonio, and Santiago—expanding its reach and strengthening its global scientific community.
Whether you’re new to the field or an established expert, this program offers an unparalleled opportunity to learn, connect, and push the boundaries of brain‑health research.
Neurepiomics | October 5-7, 2026 | Hotel Contessa on the San Antonio Riverwalk
The application period has officially closed. However, additional participants may be considered on a case-by-case basis, subject to space availability. Please note that any late applicants will not be eligible for travel support.
To inquire about attendance opportunities, please contact Andrea R. V. R. Horimoto, PhD.
Registration fees are waived for most low- and middle-income countries, many students and postdoctoral fellows, and all faculty and registrants from the host institutions.
Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit will not be offered for this event.
Hotel Information and Visitor’s Guide
Our Visitor’s Guide has information to help you plan your stay, including hotel information and recommendations for nearby restaurants and attractions along the River Walk.
Come ready to connect with peers and leaders, gain fresh insights, and help shape the future of brain health research.
Schedule of Events
Sunday, October 4
4:30 PM | Museum Visit to Briscoe Western Museum
Reception at Jack Guenther Pavilion River View Pavilion
5:30 PM | Buffet Dinner Service
6:00 PM | Low Field MRI Group Updates | Mohamad Habes, PhD, UT Health San Antonio, and Tomas Paus, MD, PhD, Université de Montréal (Canada)
Brain Banking Updates | Claudia Suemoto, MD, PhD, MSc, Sudha Seshadri, MD, and Haritha Katragadda, UT Health San Antonio
Monday, October 5
7:00 AM | Conference Check-In Opens | Hotel Contessa, Second-Floor
Attendees are welcome to enjoy a continental breakfast featuring freshly brewed coffee and a selection of hot teas.
7:50 AM | Welcome and Opening Remarks | Sudha Seshadri, MD, UT Health San Antonio (USA), and Stéphanie Debette, MD, PhD, Paris Brain Institute (France)
Session 1. Introduction to Neurepiomics | Chairs: Sudha Seshadri and Xueqiu Jian, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
8:00 AM | Introduction to Epidemiology of Dementia
Lenore Launer, PhD, NIH (USA)
8:30 AM | Introduction to Genetic Analyses and Genetics of Dementias
Anita DeStefano, PhD, Boston University (USA)
9:00 AM | Break
9:15 AM | Stroke Type and Subtype: Classification, Phenotyping, and Why It Matters for Omics
Hee–Joon Bae, MD, Seoul National University Bundang Hospital (South Korea)
9:45 AM | Genetics and Multiomics of Stroke and Cerebral Small Vessel Disease
Stéphanie Debette, MD, PhD, Paris Brain Institute (France)
10:20 AM | Introduction to MRI and Multimodal Neuroimaging
Ami Tsuchida, PhD, Vascular Brain Health Institute Bordeaux (France)
10:50 AM | Break
Session 2. Diverse Neurophenomics | Chair: Monica Goss, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (15 minute presentations and 10 minute Q&A)
11:05 AM | Introduction to Cognitive Assessment in Population Studies
Amy Brodtman, MD, Monash University (Australia)
11:30 AM | Genetics of Brain Volumes and Cognitive Domains
Claudia L. Satizabal, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
11:55 AM | Sensory Motor Assessment, Vascular and Polygenic Risk Scores and Precision Prevention in Population Studies
Sudha Seshadri, MD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
12:20 PM | Parkinson’s Disease in Populations: Latin American Research Consortium on the Genetics of Parkinson’s Disease (LARGE–PD)
Juan Felipe Zambrano, PhD, Cleveland Clinic (USA)
12:45 PM | Stroke risk in Black Women: Novel Insights from the Black Women’s Health Study
Hugo Aparicio, MD, Boston University (USA)
1:05 PM | Lunch Buffet and Mentor/Mentee Lunch
Session 3. Exposome | Chair: John Blangero, PhD, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA) (20-25 minute presentations and 10 minute Q&A)
2:00 PM | The Metal Exposome, Omics, and Brain Health: The MOBH Collaborative
Ana Navas-Acien, MD, PhD, Columbia University (USA)
2:35 PM | Exposomics: Toxins, Gene–Environment Interactions and Alzheimer’s Disease
Jacob Galan, PhD, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA)
3:05 PM | Lifetime Reproductive and Hormonal Factors and Neurocognitive Outcomes
Emer McGrath, MD, University of Ireland Galway (Ireland)
3:35 PM | Break
3:50 PM | Cognitive Assessment in Bilingual and Non–English Speaking Populations (MHAS)
Silvia Mejia Arango, PhD, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA)
4:15 PM | Impact of Geography, Migration, Culture on Brain Health
Gladys E. Maestre, MD, PhD, The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (USA)
4:40 PM | Assessing Blood Biomarkers of AD in Diverse Settings
Jeremy Tanner, MD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
5:05 PM | The Personal Exposome: Assessing Diet, Social Networks, Sleep, Home Monitoring in Cohort Studies
Debora Melo Van Lent, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
Jayandra Himali, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
Vanessa Young, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
7:00 PM | A Texas Welcome and Dinner at Hotel Contessa
Tuesday, October 6
7:30 AM | Conference Check-In Opens | Hotel Contessa, Second-Floor
Attendees are welcome to enjoy a continental breakfast featuring freshly brewed coffee and a selection of hot teas.
Session 4. Multi-Omics Part 1 | Chairs: Stéphanie Debette
8:00 AM | Analyses of Whole Genome Sequencing Data and Introduction to TOPMed
Chloé Sarnowski, PhD, UT Health Houston (USA)
8:35 AM | Exploiting Multiple Ancestries and Structural Variation to Parse Genetic Loci
Myriam Fornage, PhD, UT Health Houston (USA)
9:05 AM | Brain Banking, Neuropathology Endophenotypes
Claudia Suemoto, MD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
9:35 AM | Break
9:45 AM | Transcriptomic and miRNA Studies of Imaging Endophenotypes
Ahmed Aziz, MD, PhD, University of Bonn and the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Germany)
10:20 AM | Plasma Proteomics Beyond Abundance: Molecular States at the Interface of Genetics and the Exposome
Agustín Ruiz Laza MD, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
10:50 AM | Lipidomics of Brain Maturation and Aging
Zdenka Pausova, PhD, Université de Montréal (Canada)
11:20 AM | Break
Session 5. Multi-Omics Part 2
11:30 AM | A Metabolomic Biomarker Signature for Migraine
Daniel Chasman, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital (USA)
12:00 PM | Microbiome Introduction and Analysis of Microbiome
Bernard Fongang, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
1:00 PM | Lunch Buffet and Poster Session
2:30 PM | Meet Journal Editors
Bradford Worrall, MD, MSc, UVA Health, and George Perry, PhD, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Session 6. MRI Acquisition and Analyses, AI/ML | Chairs: Tomas Paus, MD, PhD, University of Toronto, and Bradford Worrall, MD, MSc, UVA Health
3:25 PM | Setting Up Imaging in Africa
Rufus Akinyemi, PhD, University of Ibadan (Nigeria)
3:50 PM | Group Photo
4:20 PM | Break
4:35 PM | Sequencers Without Scanners: Closing Africa’s Brain Imaging Phenotype Gap | Godwin Inalegwu Ogbole, MSc, MD, University of Ibadan (Nigeria)
RURAL MIND: Multimodal Brain Health Research in Rural America | Mohamad Habes, PhD; David Martinez, PhD; UT Health San Antonio (USA)
Toward Equitable AI for Alzheimer’s Disease Detection Across Diverse Populations | Ngoc-Huynh Ho, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
VIBRA: SVD Quantification Using Deep Learning Across Multiple ADRCs | Niyas Shamsudeen Kutty, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
6:15 PM | Viva San Antonio Dinner at Hotel Contessa
Wednesday, October 7
7:00 AM | Conference Check-In Opens | Hotel Contessa, Second-Floor
Attendees are welcome to enjoy a continental breakfast featuring freshly brewed coffee and a selection of hot teas.
Session 7. Biomarkers and Drug Development for Cognitive Decline, AD and VCID
Chairs: Aniket Mishra, PhD, Paris Brain Institute, and Jenny Hsieh, PhD, The University of Texas at San Antonio
8:00 AM | Meet Training Grant PIs
Panel Discussion Led by:
- José E. Cavazos, MD, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
- Robert Clarke, MD, UT Health San Antonio
- Maggie Flanagan, MD, UT Health San Antonio
- Peter Fox, MD, UT Health San Antonio
- Valentina Garbarino, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
- Sarah Hopp, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
- Vasan Ramachandran, MD, FACC, FAHA, UT Health San Antonio
8:45 AM | Cross Tissue Multi–Omics Guided Identification of Novel and Repurposed Drug Targets and Transposable Elements
Murali Sargurupremraj, PhD, UT Health San Antonio (USA)
9:15 AM | Modelling Complex Diseases with Organoids
Jenny Hsieh, PhD
9:45 AM | Turning Genomic Discoveries into Targeted Therapeutic Strategies
Martin Dichgans, MD, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (Germany)
10:15 AM | Wrap Up, Discussion of Next Event and Optional Travel to Hands-On Sessions
11:15 AM | Shuttle Transportation to UT Health San Antonio for Hands-On Sessions (Additional Registration Required.)
11:45 AM – 3:00 PM | Hands-On Sessions at UT Health San Antonio
Session 1 | Genetic and Multiomic Analyses | Center for Brain Health, Second-Floor, Ann Biggs Community Room
Xueqiu Jian, PhD, and Feiyang Zhao, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
Aniket Mishra, PhD, Paris Brain Institute, and Gennady Roshchupkin, PhD, Erasmus University Rotterdam
Session 2 | Introduction to Cognitive Assessment, Early Detection of AD and Digital Tools | Center for Brain Health, Second-Floor, Room 224
Vanessa Young, PhD, MS, and Gabrielle Hromas, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
Session 3 | Image Analysis Pipelines | Research Imaging Institute
Mohamad Habes, PhD, UT Health San Antonio
Register for Oct 7 Hands-On Session
3:00 PM | Return Shuttle Transportation to Hotel Contessa
End of Neurepiomics