Neurepiomics Speakers 2019
Sudha Seshadri, M.D.
Co-director of Neurepiomics, Founding Director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases
Sudha Seshadri, M.D., is a board-certified behavioral neurologist who completed her clinical training in the leading academic medical center in India and then her fellowship and residency training at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, MA and the Boston University, Boston, MA. Since 2006, Dr. Seshadri has served as teaching faculty at Boston University, becoming a full Professor in 2011 and since then she has been the Principal Investigator for the brain aging, Alzheimer’s and other dementias and stroke research in the oldest epidemiological study in the world, the Framingham Heart Study which has made landmark contributions to our understanding of how to prevent heart disease and stroke and in improving our understanding of dementia.
Dr. Seshadri is highly respected with a superb reputation in both science and clinical care and is a recognized thought leader in Alzheimer’s disease, leading several large, international consortia. She has over 350 original research publications, has co-authored several books and position papers, lectured extensively, nationally and internationally, on Alzheimer’s disease, dementia and the genetics of stroke and vascular brain injury, and serves as the principal investigator on nine NIH grants. She has been a grant reviewer for the National Institute on Aging for over a decade and also advises international funding agencies, serving for example on the Senate of the German Institute for Neurodegeneration.
As founding director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, Dr. Seshadri oversees, integrates and coordinates all activities of the Biggs Institute which include clinical care and clinical translational research, biological and innovative computational research, population and policy research, professional education and community engagement. Over 20 superb clinical and research faculty have been recruited to join the Biggs in the last 2 years.
Dr. Seshadri and her team have established 3 multi-disciplinary clinics designed to personalize each patients’ care, whether the need is for prevention, diagnosis and treatment, or advice on palliative and medical care for patients with advanced dementia. At each stage we believe in learning from and sharing our most current knowledge with patient and families and supporting them as broadly as possible. All patients are invited to join a broad range of ongoing research efforts. Dr. Seshadri’s dedication to advancing research to find better ways to treat and prevent Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases has led the Biggs Institute to become a recognized site for national clinical trials by all leading Alzheimer’s disease clinical trial consortia.
Stéphanie Debette, M.D. Ph.D.
Co-director of Neurepiomics, Associate Professor of Neurology and Epidemiology at Lariboisière Hospital and University Paris Diderot, Paris, France, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine
Stéphanie Debette, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of epidemiology and neurology at Bordeaux University and INSERM U1219 (where she directs a team of vascular and neurological diseases: integrative and genetic epidemiology: http://www.bordeaux-population-health.center/en/teams/vascular-and-neurological-diseases-integrative-and-genetic-epidemiology-vintage/), and adjunct associate professor in the department of neurology, Boston University, USA. S. Debette is a practicing neurologist since 2006 and holds a master degree in statistical genetics and a PhD in Epidemiology (2008). She obtained a Fulbright fellowship, a Chair of Excellence (French National Research Agency), and is member of a Leducq Transatlantic Network of Excellence on cerebral small vessel disease. Recently she received a European Research Council starting grant to study genetic determinants of early structural brain alterations in young students. She is actively involved in the Cohorts of Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, current vice-chair of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium (ISGC) steering committee, and coordinates the CADISP (Cervical Artery Dissection and Ischemic Stroke in young Patients) consortium.
Hugo J. Aparicio, M.D., M.P.H.
Attending at the Department of Neurology at Boston Medical Center and Investigator of the Framingham Heart Study and the Veterans Health Administration Cardiovascular Disease Program in Boston, Massachusetts
Hugo J. Aparicio, M.D., M.P.H., completed his postdoctoral research fellowship in neuroepidemiology of stroke and dementia. He was an early-stage investigator at the Framingham Heart Study with the interest in role of circulating biomarkers and neuroimaging to characterize and predict cognitive decline caused by cerebrovascular disease.
Dr. Aparicio’s research interests include the identification of lifestyle risk factors, biomarkers, neuroimaging markers and genetic influences associated with cerebrovascular diseases. He is particularly interested in the contributions of vascular risk factors to stroke, brain injury and aging, cognitive dysfunction and the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
Joshua C. Bis, Ph.D.
Research Scientist with the University of Washington’s Cardiovascular Health Research Unit at the University of Washington
Dr. Bis received his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of Washington School of Public Health. Dr. Bis’s primary research interest is in understanding the role of genomic variation with traits relevant to cardiovascular health and aging.
Locally, Dr. Bis has pursued these questions within the Cardiovascular Health Study and the Heart and Vascular Health Studies. He is also involved in several large-scale genomics collaborations: he co-leads working groups in the CHARGE consortium and the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project and has actively participated in the NHLBI’s Exome Sequencing Project (ESP), the International Genomics of Alzheimer’s Project (IGAP), and the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program.
In these settings, his work has focused on analysis methods, drug-gene interactions, clinical and subclinical atherosclerosis, cardiovascular risk factors, and a broad range of neurological traits including stroke, brain imaging endophenotypes, and Alzheimer’s disease.
John Blangero, Ph.D.
Professor of the Department of Human Genetics and South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute at the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
John Blangero, Ph.D., is a world leader in the area of the genetics of complex diseases with over 600 published articles and competitive grant funding in excess of $100 million. He is a devoted advocate of large pedigree studies for the identification of complex disease related genes and for the likely importance of rare variants in normal quantitative variation. He is the leader of the longitudinal San Antonio Family Heart Study. Current interests include epidemiological scale deep cellular phenotyping and statistical genetic methods to maximize environmental signals in the human disease exposome. He is the driving force behind the SOLAR software package for statistical genetics used by more than 7,000 investigators worldwide.
Donna T. Chen, M.D., M.P.H.
Associate Professor in the Center for Health Humanities and Ethics, Department of Public Health Sciences, and Department of Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia School of Medicine
Dr. Chen’s scholarly work addresses questions in clinical and research ethics, largely related to the clinical neurosciences; professional and organizational ethics; and ethics education. Her ethics research aims to advance knowledge through conceptual analyses and empirical research, which in turn helps guide developments in ethics practice, education, policy and normative understandings. An award-winning educator, she teaches ethics across the University setting to students in undergraduate, graduate, medical, law, public health and nursing programs and to research trainees and faculty at all levels aiming always to instill an appreciation for asking good questions and seeking answers that are practical, relevant and honor important ethical values. Dr. Chen provides leadership for the iTHRIV Scholars’ Program and Mentoring Academy and is the Founding Director of UVA’s Translational Research Ethics Consultation Service (T-RECS) all supported in part by NIH/NCATS Awards UL1TR003015 and KL2TR003016. She has consulted to researchers and policy-makers at institutions in the US and abroad and served on committees related to clinical and research ethics, education and mentorship including for the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, National Institute for Drug Abuse, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine and the American Psychiatric Association. As a physician-researcher whose work in ethics connects theoretical concepts and empirical research to improve policy, education and practice, Dr. Chen sees her scholarly contributions as a form of “translational research” in bioethics.
Fabrice Crivello, Ph.D.
Research Director at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission
The works of Fabrice Crivello, Ph.D., are at the interface between methodology in neuroimaging and research in population neuroimaging. Following university studies in signal and image processing, Dr. Crivello joined the Imaging Neurofunctional Group (GIN) and obtained a PhD in biological and medical engineering on the detection and localization of cerebral activations with positron emission tomography. He completed a post-doctoral internship in the context of the “European Computerized Human Brain Database” program aiming at building a multi-scale and multi-modality cerebral imaging database. In 1998, he was recruited as a research officer at the CEA.
His research is structured along two complementary axes. The first concerns the development, implementation and distribution of automated procedures dedicated to the extraction of structural cerebral phenotypes. The second, concerns the study of these structural phenotypes in the context of the exploitation of large cerebral imaging cohorts in order to: 1) characterize cerebral anatomical asymmetries, their factors of variability and their genetic determinants; 2) map the maturation and aging of cerebral anatomy.
Charles DeCarli, M.D.
Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center and Professor of
Neurology at the University of California at Davis
Charles DeCarli, M.D., is the recipient of the Victor and Genevieve Orsi Chair in Alzheimer’s Research and the Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of California at Davis, a National Institutes of Health-funded Alzheimer’s research center, and director of the Imaging of Dementia and Aging (IDeA) laboratory. His research focuses on using advanced structural and functional brain imaging to study normal aging, mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and the role of genetics, cerebrovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease on these processes. He has published over 300 peer reviewed journal articles in high-impact journals such as Brain, Lancet Neurology, JAMA and Nature Genetics. Dr. DeCarli is a recipient of the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine—Imaging of the Aging Brain in recognition of his work. He also is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, Society for Neuroscience as well as a founding member of the Alzheimer’s Imaging Consortium and the International Society for Vascular Behavioral and Cognitive Disorders (VAS-COG).
Brian Downer, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor in the Division of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch
The research of Brian Downer, Ph.D., is to produce evidence that informs the development of preventive interventions that improve the overall health and well-being of older adults. This goal stems from Dr. Downer’s Ph.D. training in gerontology having taken place in a college of public health. His public health perspective has influenced his research during all stages of his career. His doctoral research focused on identifying potentially modifiable risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) among older adults with a genetic predisposition for dementia. His research as a post-doctoral fellow at UTMB advanced his interest in studying high-risk populations by investigating potentially modifiable risk factors for ADRD among older Hispanics. Dr. Downer’s research evolved after joining the Division of Rehabilitation Sciences in February 2016 to include a focus on quality and outcomes of post-acute care. He has special interest in older adults with cognitive impairment who are receiving post-acute care in nursing home settings. His current research also investigates how physical frailty contributes to the progression of cognitive decline in diverse populations.
Carole Dufouil, Ph.D.
Senior Research Professor at the French Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Bordeaux, France
Co-director of the VINTAGE Team (Vascular and Neurological Diseases: INTegrative and GEnetic Epidemiology)
Deputy Director for International and Overseas Relations at Bordeaux School of Public Health (ISPED)
Carole Dufouil, Ph.D., has training in epidemiology with research primarily focusing on establishing the determinants of brain disease, including the related causes of dementia. Dr. Dufouil has longstanding experience in running large cohort studies on brain aging including by being co-principal investigator of the 3C-Dijon study and the Memento cohort. She also has extensive international collaborations through National Institute on Aging grants and European funding sources. She is one of the founders of the MELODEM initiative that aims to develop and disseminate methods for quantitative research on prevention and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Since its inception, MELODEM’s reach has grown from a handful of participants to more than 150, representing more than 25 institutions in 10 countries and numerous data sources.
Bernard Fongang, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Research focuses on developing new computational tools to understand the genetics, genomics and environmental factors driving Alzheimer’s diseases and related disorders. Recent studies have highlighted the association between the gut microbiome, the production of the neurotransmitter serotonin and several neurological disorders. But at the molecular level, how the gut microbiota interacts with the host to produce serotonin and the mechanisms leading to neurological disorders are still not well understood. Research interests include the relationship between serotonin receptors (structurally and functionally), the gut microbiome, the Omics (Genomics, Genetics, Proteomics, Metabolomics) and the risk of dementia, stroke and related neurological endophenotypes. Dr. Fongang’s lab is currently: (i) studying how changes in the gut microbiota are associated with risk of dementia, vascular dementia, and stroke within the Framingham Heart Study; (ii) identifying new genetic loci associated with all-cause dementia and vascular dementia within the CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology) consortium; (iii) studying the gene expression patterns and regulatory elements associated with cerebral small vessel disease and vascular dementia; (iv) predicting novel druggable interfaces of serotonin receptors involved in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders.
These projects involve using and developing cutting-edge algorithms and software to individually study the contribution of each factor (Omics, serotonin receptors, gut microbiome) to neurological disorders and integrate the resulting information to identify profiles associated with risk of cognitive impairment, stroke and dementia with the ultimate goal of personalized medicine.
Myriam Fornage, Ph.D.
Tenured Professor of Molecular Medicine and Human Genetics
and the Laurence and Johanna Favrot Distinguished Professor at
UTHealth in Houston
Myriam Fornage, Ph.D., studies the genetics and genomics of brain vascular disease and brain aging, both in its clinical and pre-clinical forms in well characterized and diverse populations from young adulthood to old age. Dr. Fornage conducts large-scale genetic studies that have led to the identification of novel genes for brain vascular disease, brain aging and related MRI endophenotypes. She is an active investigator of several large national and international consortia including the Cohorts of Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program and the National Institute of Aging Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP). She is a member of the Leadership Committee of the American Heart Association Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine and the Stroke Statistics Committee of the Epidemiology & Prevention Council, and has served on several National Institutes of Health expert advisory panels, including as a member of the Genetics of Health and Disease (GHD) study section.
Bess Frost, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Studies focus on the fundamental processes in cell biology that drive neurodegeneration. Employing a multi-system approach to rapidly identify, test and validate hypotheses that are relevant to human disease. Early discovery takes place in Drosophila, a model organism that is well suited for investigating issues of causality in disease processes. To determine if studies are relevant to human disease, the research complements Drosophila work with comparative analyses in postmortem human brain.
A significant focus is on tauopathy. Tauopathies, including Alzheimer’s disease, are pathologically characterized by the deposition of neurofibrillary tangles composed of tau protein in the brains of affected individuals. Current objectives include investigating the cellular pathway whereby pathogenic tau mediates neuronal death and developing a novel screening platform to identify cellular mediators of prion-like tau propagation.
Mohamad Habes, Ph.D.
Director of the Biggs Institute Neuroimaging Core and Assistant Professor of Radiology at UT Health San Antonio
Dr. Habes leads an interdisciplinary research program whose translational scope includes medical image analytics and population neuroscience. He has been playing a leading role in a large consortium, named iSTAGING, which brings together more than 15,000 MRIs into a big-data-analytics paradigm aiming to characterize typical brain aging. He also lead efforts to relate deviations from typical brain aging with cognition, genetic risk factors, and clinical risk factors. This is one of the largest efforts internationally to leverage advanced analytics to characterize the heterogeneity of brain aging. Moreover, he has particular interest in the role of cerebrovascular disease in advanced brain aging and dementia.
M. Arfan Ikram, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc.
Professor of Epidemiology at Erasmus MC Rotterdam, the Netherlands
Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health
Mohammad Arfan Ikram, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., is a principal investigator of the Rotterdam Study and a key collaborator in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging
Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium. Dr. Ikram’s research focuses on investigating the etiology of neurologic diseases in the elderly, with a particular focus on dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive decline. His main areas of research are to elucidate the earliest signs of brain diseases before clinical symptoms are present and to understand how these lead to clinical manifestation of disease. In addition, he is interested in pre-clinical signs that can be used to identify persons at highest risk of developing disease. With this focus, he uses data from the large population-based Rotterdam Study and Rotterdam Scan Study that followed nearly 15,000 people for a period of nearly 30 years.
His research focus has been the use of MRI imaging to understand brain disease. In addition to MRI imaging, Dr. Ikram has used neuropsychological testing, genome-wide, exome chip, DNA-methylation and sequencing technologies, and recently electronic gait assessments to not only identify how these pre-clinical markers lead to clinical disease, but also to disentangle the intricate relationships between these markers.
He has published over 550 international scientific papers (H-index = 63) and currently heads a research group of 17 Ph.D. students, four post-doctoral students, three master of science degree students and five research staff.
Lenore J. Launer, Ph.D., M.Sc.
Senior Investigator at the National Institute of Aging
Lenore J. Launer, Ph.D., M.Sc., coordinated European dementia initiatives and research on migraines in the Netherlands after receiving her Ph.D. in epidemiology from Cornell University and her post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health. In 1999, Dr. Launer joined the National Institute on Aging to lead the Neuroepidemiology Section of the Intramural Research Program. Studies in the neuroepidemiology section focus on understanding the contribution of genetic, inflammatory, metabolic, vascular and hormonal factors to well-characterized continuously and discretely measured sub-clinical and clinical phenotypes in brain disease, and investigating the links between brain disease and other common diseases of old age. To investigate these issues, research is conducted in large epidemiologic studies, including the HAAS, AGES-Reykjavik Study and CARDIA. These resources allow testing in the general population, hypotheses on risk/protective factors and mechanisms during different periods in life, and at different stages of the disease processes leading to dementia.
Gladys E. Maestre, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Neuroscience and Human Genetics and the Director of the UTRGV Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center for Minority Aging Research (AD-RCMAR) at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine
Professor Emerita at the University of Zulia at Venezuela
Gladys E. Maestre, M.D., Ph.D., received her M.D. from the University of Zulia in Venezuela and her M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, and post-doctoral training in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. She has directed the Maracaibo Aging Study as leading principal investigator since 1998. This is a longitudinal population-based study of dementia and other age-related health problems that has followed more than 2,500 subjects since its inception and has provided important insights about the aging of Latinos. The focus of her research is to advance age-related conditions that disproportionately affect Latinos, at the intersection of biomedical, social and behavioral, and implementation sciences.
Riccardo Marioni, Ph.D., M.S.
Chancellor’s Fellow and Senior Group Leader at the Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine within the University of Edinburgh Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine
The group of Riccardo Marioni, Ph.D., M.S., primary research goal is to use computational models to understand the molecular mechanisms that underlie Alzheimer’s disease, leading to enhanced prediction, and ultimately mitigation of the disease. His group has a passion for research into ageing and, in particular, examining the genetic and environmental contributions to health and cognitive ageing. Their work is at the intersection of the biomedical and social sciences.
Much of their work focuses on DNA methylation analyses (e.g., EWAS and epigenetic clock) in the Generation Scotland study (n=10,000 with EPIC array methylation and phenotypes) and the Lothian Birth Cohorts (longitudinal 450k methylation array data on 1,500 individuals at up to 4 time points).
https://www.ed.ac.uk/centre-genomic-medicine/research-groups/marioni-group
@MarioniGroup
Tomáš Paus, M.D., Ph.D.
Distinguished Senior Scientist and Director of the Population Neuroscience & Developmental Neuroimaging Program at the Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital
Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Toronto
During the first 20 years of his scientific pursuits, Tomáš Paus, M.D., Ph.D., worked on functional and structural organization of the human brain using a variety of approaches including studies of patients with brain lesions, functional and structural neuroimaging and brain stimulation.
In the last 15+ years, his work integrates epidemiology, neuroscience and genetics – through a new discipline of population neuroscience – in the pursuit of knowledge relevant for child and youth brain health. This research draws on data acquired in a number of cohorts based in North and South America and Europe.
The work published by Dr. Paus and his colleagues has been well received by peers, being cited in over 45,000 publications. In 2013, Springer published his book “Population Neuroscience”. Dr. Paus received the Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award, Gold Medal of the Masaryk University, and is an elected member of the International Neuropsychology Symposium. He serves as Associate Editor of the Human Brain Mapping and Social Neuroscience,and is a member of several Scientific Advisory Boards in Europe and North America.
Joel Salinas, M.D., M.B.A., MSc
Assistant Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Clinical Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health
Director of The Salinas Lab
After studying biology and sociology at Cornell University, Joel Salinas, M.D., M.B.A., MSc, earned his medical degree with Research Distinction at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and completed his neurology residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He then subspecialized through a combined research and clinical fellowship in Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is currently Assistant Professor and Faculty Neurologist at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Neurology and is Clinical Director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health.
He specializes in practical clinical approaches to brain health and conducts research in social and behavioral epidemiology to understand the complex interactions between social relationships and brain health. He also chronicles his experiences as a neurologist and the powerful stories of patients experiencing neurological conditions in his book, Mirror Touch: A Memoir of Synesthesia and the Secret Life of the Brain.
Murali Sargurupremraj, Ph.D.
University of Bordeaux
Dr. Sargurupremraj completed his Bachelor’s in Biotechnology in India, and Master’s on a narrowed down topic “Molecular genetics” at the University of Leicester. He is especially interested in the genetics of complex diseases and the effect of environmental interactions. His PhD from the Technical University of Munich was on “How intermediate quantitative traits – like cytokines can function as biomarkers in the diagnosis of early onset Asthma”. At present, he is working on the applications of genome-wide analysis tools in associating the genetic background with phenotypes of cerebral small vessel disease and endophenotypes such as memory function. His future interests will be on extending the findings from genome-wide tools by studying the effect of epigenetics modifications like methylation and so on.
Joshua M. Shulman, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience and Molecular and
Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine
Investigator in the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research
Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital
Joshua M. Shulman M.D., Ph.D., received a bachelor’s degree in biochemical sciences from Harvard College, and his Ph.D. in genetics from Cambridge University. He subsequently studied at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his M.D., and completed his neurology residency and fellowship training at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Dr. Shulman’s research focuses on understanding the genomic architecture and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, integrating human genetic investigations with functional investigation in experimental animal models. He also cares for patients with Parkinson’s disease and related disorders at the Baylor College of Medicine Parkinson’s Disease Center and Movement Disorders Clinic in Houston.
Hans-Ulrich Klein, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Neurological Sciences(in Neurology, the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain)
Dr. Hans-Ulrich Klein received his PhD in Biomedical Informatics and Biomathematics from the University of Münster, Germany, where he worked on models and algorithms to analyze and integrate epigenomic and transcriptomic data. Following an emerging interest in epigenetic mechanisms of aging and neurodegeneration, he joined the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School as a research fellow in Dr. Philip De Jager’s laboratory, and subsequently continued his research fellowship here at the Taub Institute, prior to being recruited as a faculty member. Dr. Klein’s current research focuses on the interaction between the epigenome, transcriptome, genetic risk variants and neuropathologies in different cell types of the central nervous system, with the aim of understanding the pathogenesis of neurological diseases.
Farhaan Vahidy, Ph.D., M.B.B.S., M.P.H.
Associate Professor, Department of Neurology
Director, Data Management and Analytics Core (D-MAC)
Director, Population Health and Health Services Research Division
Dr. Vahidy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at McGovern Medical School and the Institute for Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease at UTHealth. He leads the Data Management and Analysis Core and the Division for Population Health and Health Services Research of the Stroke Institute. He has faculty appointments with the Centers for Evidence Based Medicine and the Biostatistics/Epidemiology Research Design Core of the UTHealth’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science. He chairs the data governance committee for the Memorial Hermann integrated system of comprehensive stroke care. His research interests are epidemiology and prevention of cerebrovascular disease and the impact of healthcare systems on patient-centered outcomes. He is independently funded to study regionalization of care for brain hemorrhage patients across the state of Texas. He also has developed a new population health post-doctoral program in stroke and cerebrovascular disease. He co-directs coursework in advanced analytics and research design at UTHealth Houston, serves on national stroke research education and training committees, and provides mentorship to post-doctoral fellows, stroke fellows, and clinical faculty.
Cornelia van Duijn, Ph.D.
Professor of Epidemiology at NDPH and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford
Cornelia van Duijn, Ph.D., studied Human Nutrition and Mathematical Statistics at the Agricultural University of Wageningen and Genetics and Epidemiology at the Erasmus University Medical School.
Dr. van Duijn’s research within the Oxford Big Data Institute focuses on large-scale –omics studies of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer, Parkinson and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and ophthalmological disorders including glaucoma, age related macular degeneration and myopia. She further studies systemic vascular, endocrine and gastrointestinal pathology that is relevant for brain and ocular function. Her current research portfolio includes cross-omics research integrating (epi)genetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and microbiome data of epidemiological cohorts with state of the art brain imaging and cellular model systems.
Over the years, Cornelia has been a leading figure in several international consortia including ENGAGE (European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology), CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart & Aging Research in Genome Epidemiology), IGAP (International Genetics of Alzheimer Disease Project (IGAP), ADSP (Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project) and IGGC (International Genetics of Glaucoma Consortium).
At present, she is the leader of two major consortia: the Horizon2020 CoSTREAM consortium aiming to understand the link between stroke and Alzheimer disease and the MEMORABEL Gut-Brain consortium aiming to unravel the role of the gut microbiome in Alzheimer disease and brain pathology.
She further leads the human proteomics and metabolomics discovery research in the Innovative Medicine Initiative (IMI) ADAPTED program, which aims to identify new Alzheimer medicines through understanding the function of the APOE gene. Cornelia is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Council for Medical Sciences (RMW).
Prashanthi Vemuri, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at the Mayo Clinic Rochester and Imaging Researcher in the population based sample of Mayo Clinic Study of Aging
Prashanthi Vemuri, Ph.D., has a broad background in engineering and clinical neuroscience, with specific training and expertise in imaging of neurodegenerative disorders. Her areas of research are investigating mechanisms through which protective and risk factors influence AD imaging biomarkers and outcomes and developing and validating imaging-based biomarkers to improve the understanding and management of Alzheimer’s disease and cerebrovascular disease.
Dr. Vemuri is recipient of the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence grant from the NIA, Alzheimer’s Association New Investigator grant award, and was awarded the AFAR-GE healthcare junior investigator award for excellence in aging and imaging research. Her work is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIA and NINDS).
Sarah Williams-Blangero, Ph.D.
Founding Director of the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute and Founding Chair of the Department of Human Genetics in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley
Sarah Williams-Blangero, Ph.D., is a genetic epidemiologist with over 30 years of experience in research on the genetic determinants of differential susceptibility to common complex diseases, particularly in minority populations. Dr. Williams-Blangero joined the Texas Biomedical Research Institute in San Antonio as a postdoctoral scientist in the Department of Genetics in 1987. After being promoted to scientist (equivalent of full professor), she served as chair of the Department of Genetics for 15 years. She also served as the deputy director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center that was based at Texas Biomedical Research Institute during two of the years she was chair of the Department of Genetics. In 2014, Dr. Williams-Blangero joined the new medical school being formed at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley as the founding director of the South Texas Diabetes and Obesity Institute.
Dr. Williams-Blangero has served as a standing member of two National Institutes of Health study sections and has served as an ad hoc member on numerous other review panels. As a principal investigator, Dr. Williams-Blangero has generated over $25 million in NIH funding to support her research. A leader in the conduct of human population studies, Dr. Williams-Blangero has developed sites in Nepal and Brazil that have been active for over 30 years and over 20 years respectively. She has published more than 125 papers in scientific literature publications. As a professor at The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, she has focused her efforts on fostering research on diabetes, obesity and aging in minority populations.
Bradford B. Worrall, M.D.
Professor, Department of Neurology at University of Virginia Health System
Dr. Worrall’s research approaches genetic issues of cerebrovascular disease from several angles. Currently he is working with the Department of Health Evaluation Sciences on a web-based tool to assess comprehensive family history information in assigning risk and recommending interventions.
In collaboration with the NIH Stroke Branch , Dr. Worrall is looking at genetic polymorphisms of inflammatory mediators in patients with symptomatic carotid atherosclerosis. He works with other members of the stroke group in ongoing clinical trials.