Dr. Fahnestock received her Honours B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from University of California, Berkeley. Following postdoctoral work in Endocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine and Neurobiology at Stanford University, she moved to the Stanford Research Institute, where her team developed base-by-base DNA sequencing, the basis for today’s DNA sequencing machines. After a sabbatical in the Neurology Department at UCSF, Dr. Fahnestock moved to McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada. She is now a Full Professor in McMaster’s Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences Department, an Associate member of the Biology Department, and co-founder of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience. Dr. Fahnestock is internationally recognized for her work on neurotrophic factor biosynthesis, regulation, expression and signalling, and their roles in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurological disorders. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and has been funded continuously for over 35 years by NIH, CIHR and private foundations. She is a past President of the Southern Ontario Neuroscience Association, a co-Team leader for the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging, and a co-organizer of the Alzheimer’s track at the annual Society for Brain Mapping and Therapeutics meeting.