ALZFORUM - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Head, Laboratory for Alzheimer 's Disease
Job Titles:
- Professor / Chief, Molecular Genetics Unit
Job Titles:
- Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Job Titles:
- Director, Laboratory of Molecular Neuropathology, McLean Hospital Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neuropathology / Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor / Department of Neurology / Washington University
Job Titles:
- Director / U.K. Dementia Research Institute
- Professor, Human Genetics
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurobiology, Developmental Biology, and Neurology
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, Department of Pharmacology / Loyola University Medical Center
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor / Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children 's Hospital / Boston, Massachusetts
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Physics / Drexel University / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Job Titles:
- Professor of Pathology and Neurology / Children 's Hospital / Boston, Massachusetts
Job Titles:
- Director, Memory and Aging Center / Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Genetics / Case Western Reserve University
Job Titles:
- Director, Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia / University of California, Irvine
Job Titles:
- Chairman, Department of Neurobiology / Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Professor, Public Health and Primary Care / University of Cambridge
Job Titles:
- Professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry / Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry / University of California, Irvine / Irvine, California
Chelsea Weidman Burke joined Alzforum in 2020. After earning her bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2015, she enrolled in a chemical biology Ph.D. program at Boston College. Chelsea quickly realized that she enjoyed reading, writing, and explaining science more than performing experiments. While keeping a chemist's hunger for detail, she found herself drawn to learn about infectious diseases, the immune system, and neurodegenerative diseases, especially after watching her grandmother be affected by dementia. Chelsea changed tacks, graduated with a master's degree in chemical biology instead, and started out as a freelance science writer. She has written for BioSpace, BrightFocus Foundation, Massive Science, and Harvard University's Science in the News. Prior to joining Alzforum, Chelsea was a clinical study coordinator and laboratory technician in the microbiology and immunology department at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) in South Carolina, from 2018-2020. There, she helped run a clinical study on osteopathic manipulative treatments for sinus infection.
Job Titles:
- Director, Department of Nuclear Medicine and Centre for PET / Consultant Neurologist, Memory Disorders Clinic
- Leader of the Neuroscience PET Research Team and Director, Molecular Imaging Research
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Neurology / Center for Neurologic Diseases / Boston, Massachusetts
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor, Neurogenetics
Job Titles:
- Charlotte and Paul Hagemann Associate Professor / Department of Neurology, Molecular Biology, and Pharmacology / Washington University
Job Titles:
- Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Physiology / Director of Basic Neuroscience Research Director, Alzheimer Research Laboratory
Job Titles:
- Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases / Department of Neurology / Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Wellcome Trust Senior Research Lecturer / University College Dublin
Job Titles:
- Director, Center for Drug Discovery / Associate Professor / Department of Neurobiology
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Neurology / Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Professor in Residence, Neurosciences / University of California
Job Titles:
- Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Professor, Department of Neurosciences / University of California
Job Titles:
- Effie Marie Cain Chair in Alzheimer 's Disease Research / Alzheimer 's Disease Center / Baylor College of Medicine / Houston, Texas
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Pharmacology
Job Titles:
- Director of Innovation Development
Elizabeth is responsible for managing and directing innovation and strategy development for Alzforum. She believes turning research data into information and putting it in context will greatly facilitate the communication and understanding of research findings and thus accelerate the discovery of treatment for disease. She leads the planning and development of new projects and resources, and manages the production, curation, and technology of the Alzforum site.
Elizabeth has been with Alzforum since its inception. Before joining Alzforum, she was associate director at Harvard Medical School Library and was responsible for strategic planning and managing the technology development for the library. She launched the Harvard Medical Web and helped create many online resources for the faculty. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with degrees in biology and biochemistry, and completed her master's degree in library and information science at the University of Wisconsin.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Office, Banner Research Executive Director, Banner Alzheimer 's Institute / Professor of Psychiatry, University of Arizona
- Executive Director of the Banner Alzheimer 's Institute and Chief Executive Officer for Banner Research / Banner Alzheimer 's Institute / Phoenix, Arizona
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Medical Fellow
Job Titles:
- Chancellor 's Professor, Neurobiology and Behavior / Director, Institute for Brain Aging and Dementia
- Director, Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders ( UCI MIND )
Gabrielle Strobel oversees Alzforum's editorial operations, including research and conference reporting, expert commentary, and webinar discussions. She initiated the AlzBiomarkers database and curates the Therapeutics database.
Gabrielle joined Alzforum in 2001 after five years as a science writer at Harvard Medical School. Prior to that, she freelanced in English and German for national newspapers and magazines in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Gabrielle trained in science journalism at Stanford University and the D.C.-based magazine Science News. She graduated in 1991 with a master's degree in neuroscience from the University of Konstanz in Germany, with prior stints at the Friedrich Miescher Institute of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen and the neuroscience program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Gabrielle serves on the Alzheimer's Prevention Registry Executive Committee and the SyNergy Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology Scientific Advisory Board. She is a fellow of the National Press Foundation, author of Research Funding in Neuroscience: A Profile of the McKnight Endowment Fund, Academic Press, 2007, and scientific adviser for the 2016 Nova documentary Can Alzheimer's Be Stopped?
Job Titles:
- Professor Emeritus ( Active ), Pathology and Genome Sciences / University of Washington
Job Titles:
- Interim Chair, Department of Pathology / Professor of Pathology and Neurosciences
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor / Department of Neuroscience / Rosalind Franklin University / the Chicago Medical School / North Chicago, Illinois
Job Titles:
- Associate Director GRECC Research, Greater LA VA Medical Center / Associate Director of UCLA Alzheimer 's Disease Research Center / Professor of Medicine and Neurology, UCLA
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience / Director, Laboratory of Alzheimer 's Neurobiology
Job Titles:
- Professor, Department of Neurology / Kuopio University Hospital / Finland
Job Titles:
- Director of the Alzheimer 's Disease Cooperative Study / Dean, Alzheimer 's Disease and Neurodegenerative Research
Job Titles:
- Research Associate Professor / University of Washington
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neuropathology / Division of Clinical Neurosciences / University of Southampton / Southampton General Hospital / United Kingdom
Job Titles:
- Professor, Neurology and Psychiatry
Jessica Shugart joined Alzforum in 2014. She became captivated by the immune system as an undergraduate at UC San Diego and dove in deeper as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. After earning her PhD in 2007, Jessica studied T cell activation as a postdoc at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute in Portland, Oregon. In 2012, Jessica realized she loved telling the tales of science more than doing experiments, so she left the bench and completed the science communication program at UC Santa Cruz. Jessica has written for the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Monterey Herald, the San Jose Mercury News, and Science News in Washington, D.C. She reports from Chico in northern California.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor, Neurology, Anatomy and Neurobiology / Washington University
Job Titles:
- Head of Early Clinical Neurology
Job Titles:
- Friedman Professor of Neurology / Washington University
Job Titles:
- Director, GRECC ( S - 182 )
Job Titles:
- Chief, Laboratory of Neurogenetics / National Institute
Job Titles:
- Professor of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology / Director, Institute on Aging / Director, Alzheimer 's Disease Center
Job Titles:
- Director, Experimental Genetics Group
Job Titles:
- Professor / Chief Physician / University of Gothenburg / Gothenburg, Sweden
Job Titles:
- Director, Department of Neuroscience / Head of Alzheimer 's Disease and Neurodegeneration
Job Titles:
- Senior Biocuration Scientist
Kathy Zahs joined Alzforum in 2017, after being a devoted member for more than a decade. She is responsible for the ongoing curation of Alzforum's scientific databases and directories. Kathy received her A.B. in biology from Princeton and her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied central nervous system development and plasticity before moving to the emerging field of glial cell biology. As a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Kathy conducted research in glial biology and taught neuroscience . A desire to work on problems directly related to human health led to her joining the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care, where she researched the molecular basis of memory loss in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. Her goal at Alzforum is to provide accessible, up-to-date information useful to those interested in neurodegenerative diseases.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Epidemiology and Biostatistics / University of California
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Neurology ( Harvard Medical School ) Assistant in Genetics ( Massachusetts General Hospital )
Job Titles:
- Research Professor / Yerkes National Primate Research Center
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor / Mayo Clinic College of Medicine / Department of Neuroscience / Jacksonville, Florida
Job Titles:
- Professor / Department of Pathology
Job Titles:
- Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Gerontology / University of Southern California
Before joining Alzforum in 2013, Lucia Huntington was a journalist who worked in Boston for the Globe and the Herald newspapers, and internationally for The JoongAng Daily in Seoul and The International Herald Tribune (now the International New York Times) in Hong Kong. In 2005-2006 she joined NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Afghanistan, as senior editor for its news service Sada-e Azadi.
Lucia earned her bachelor's degree from Tufts University with a major in history and a focus in classics. A frequent contributor to the Boston Globe and the Harvard Gazette, she was also certified as a paralegal but always felt a pull toward newspapers and their ability to dispense important information clearly and in short order.
Madolyn Bowman Rogers, who reports from Wisconsin, joined Alzforum in 2010. Madolyn inherited her interest in the brain, as well as a love of words, from her neuroscientist father. She first earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then majored in biology at the University of South Florida. From there she went on to Stanford School of Medicine, where she studied developmental neurobiology. After earning her Ph.D. in 2007, she again returned to the world of words and completed the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining the Alzforum team, Madolyn interned at the Stanford School of Medicine press office, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Department of Neuropathology
Chair of the Department of Neuropathology at the Medical Faculty of the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen and Medical Director of the Department of Neuropathology, University Hospital Tübingen
Job Titles:
- Executive Vice President, Research, and Chief Scientific Officer / Genentech
Job Titles:
- Professor, Neuropsychology and Brain Imaging
Job Titles:
- Biocuration Scientist
- Writer
Marina Chicurel began working as a writer for Alzforum in 2017 and joined the database curation team a year later. As a curator, she helps scientists access, share, and analyze data, primarily by growing and maintaining Alzforum's databases. Marina earned a B.S. in basic biomedical research from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard Univeristy. Before joining Alzforum, she served as science director at the Hereditary Disease Foundation.
Job Titles:
- Chief of the Laboratory of Neurosciences / National Institute
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Head of Neuropharmacology and Biology
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor / Department of Public Health
Job Titles:
- Instructor, Center for Neurologic Diseases
Job Titles:
- Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Job Titles:
- Professor of Clinical Neurology / Institute of Neurology / University College London
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neuroscience and First a.P. Slaner Professor for Alzheimer 's Disease Research / Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Job Titles:
- Director, Cornell Memory Disorders Program / Weill Medical College of Cornell University
Job Titles:
- Department of Neurology
- Professor
After receiving a PhD in Applied Biology, Pat spent more than a decade doing cancer and immunology research in academia and the pharmaceutical industry. In 2004, she completed the Master's program in Science Writing at Boston University. Pat published her first Alzforum news story in March 2005, and since then has worked off and on for the site, writing news and covering conferences. From 2010-2015, she was the founding editor of the Pain Research Forum, a web site modeled on the Alzforum for the neuropathic pain research community. Back at Alzforum, Pat now curates the Therapeutics Database.
When she is not writing about clinical trials, Pat enjoys bicycling, cooking, and all types of sewing and needlework.
Job Titles:
- Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Scientific Director, Litwin - Zucker Center for Alzheimer 's Research
Job Titles:
- Professor of Cognitive Neurology and the Director of the Alzheimer Center / VU University Medical Center / Amsterdam, Netherlands
Job Titles:
- Chairman in Therapeutic Discovery and Development
R. Pete Vanderveen Chair in Therapeutic Discovery and Development Professor of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Biomedical Engineering Norris Foundation Laboratory for Neuroscience Research Director, USC STAR Science Education Program
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Psychiatry / McLean Hospital
Job Titles:
- Effie Marie Cain Chair in Alzheimer 's Disease Research / Alzheimer 's Disease Center / Baylor College of Medicine / Houston, Texas
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Neurology / Harvard Medical School
Job Titles:
- Director, Center for Alzheimer 's Research and Treatment / Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School / Director of Clinical Research, Memory Disorders Unit, Brigham and Women 's Hospital
Job Titles:
- Leader, Alzheimer 's Disease Team
Job Titles:
- Director, Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center, Columbia University / Co - Director, Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer 's Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University
- Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Epidemiology / Columbia University
Job Titles:
- Laboratory Head, Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor / Department of Cell and Molecular Biology / Northwestern University / the Feinberg School of Medicine
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Alzheimer 's Discovery & Development
- Vice President, Opthamology, Pain, and Early Alzheimer 's Clinical Development
Sean Hellwig has been with the Alzforum team since 2012. He is responsible for creating and implementing all of the software solutions that Alzforum needs. Prior to joining Alzforum, Sean was a Software Architect and Engineer for consulting firms in Silicon Valley. When he is not writing or dreaming of code, he enjoys spending his free time outside hiking, fly fishing, and camping with his family in the rivers, lakes and mountains of northwest Montana.
Job Titles:
- President of FBRI
- Special Advisor
Stacie Weninger is the president of FBRI. Prior to this position, she was the senior director of science programs for the Fidelity Foundations. In 2005, Dr. Weninger served as the project manager and senior analyst for the Task Force on Women in Science at Harvard University. From 2001-2005, Dr. Weninger was a senior scientist at Cell Press for the journal Neuron. Before joining Cell Press, Dr. Weninger was a postdoctoral research fellow at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School with Dr. Bruce Yankner. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow in the program in neuroscience at Harvard University. While a graduate student and postdoctoral research fellow, Dr. Weninger was actively involved in undergraduate teaching, winning six teaching awards.
Dr. Weninger received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University, and a B.S. degree in chemistry with highest honors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She currently chairs the Collaboration for Alzheimer's Prevention; is special advisor to Alzforum; chairs the board of directors for Rugen Therapeutics; serves on the boards of directors for Aratome, Atalanta, Eikonizo, RBNC, Sironax, and Target ALS; and serves as a member of the scientific advisory boards for the Indian Institute of Science's Centre for Brain Research and the U.K. Dementia Research Institute. She is also a member of Pfizer's genetics scientific advisory panel. She previously served as a founding member of the board of directors for Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI); as well as a member of the board of directors for Abelian (acquired by RBNC), Annexon Biosciences (NASDAQ: ANNX), BRI-Alzan (acquired by MeiraGTx), Digital Cognition Technologies (acquired by Linus Health), Enspectra, Inscopix, Syllable Life Sciences (acquired by RBNC), and Q-State Biosciences.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Job Titles:
- Professor
- Professor, Department of Neuropathology and Neuroscience / Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences / University of Tokyo / Japan
- Professor, University of Tokyo / Department of Neuropathology and Neuroscience Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences / Tokyo, Japan
Job Titles:
- Head of Section / Department of Neurology
Job Titles:
- Senior Associate Consultant and Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology
Tom Fagan is managing editor at Alzforum, reporting to Gabrielle Strobel. Tom manages the day-to-day operation of the Alzforum editorial team, assigning and editing news stories and overseeing content on the website and weekly newsletter. Tom began writing as a freelancer for Alzforum in 2001, soon becoming a full-time staff writer, and then managing editor in 2011.
NBefore joining Alzforum, Tom honed his writing skills at the Office of Public Affairs at Harvard Medical School, Boston. He had swapped pipettes for pens after working as post-doctoral research fellow at Harvard University, Cambridge, and before that at Osaka Bioscience Institute, and Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company, Tsukuba, Japan. Tom graduated with a Ph.D in biochemistry from University College Dublin, Ireland, where he was born.
When not immersed in science, Tom loves working in his woodshop or riding his bike, typically up steep mountain passes. He has won his age group several times in the annual race up Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. He lives in Stow, Massachusetts.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Pathology, Cell Biology, and Biology / Director of Boyer Center of Molecular Medicine
- Professor of Pathology, Cell Biology, and Biology, Director of Boyer Center of Molecular Medicine / Yale University
Job Titles:
- Professor of Neuroscience
Job Titles:
- Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology / University of Pittsburgh / Western Psychiatric Institute
Job Titles:
- Assistant Investigator / Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease / Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease / Assistant Professor of Pathology and Neurology
Job Titles:
- Consultant: Alzheimer / Aging