Christian Haass holds the chair of Biochemistry at the Medical Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, Germany. In addition, he is the speaker of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE-Munich) and the Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology (SyNergy). He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Heidelberg and graduated at the Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH) with highest honors. He trained with a postdoctoral fellowship of the DFG (German Research Foundation) at the Center for Neurologic Diseases in the Selkoe laboratory at the Harvard Medical School. Within two years he was appointed to Assistant Professor of Neurology at Harvard. In 1999 he returned to Germany, where he first was appointed as a Professor of Molecular Biology at the Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim and four years later as the chairman of the Department of Metabolic Biochemistry of the Ludwigs-Maximilians-University Munich. Dr. Haass’ research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. He discovered the molecular mechanisms allowing physiological production of Amyloid -peptide and identified biological and pathological functions of secretases. His laboratory was also the first to reconstitute the gamma-secretase complex. More recently, Haass focusses on protective functions of microglia, which he attempts to therapeutically modify with selective antibodies. Haass received many prestigious awards, among them the Potemkin Award of the American Academy of Neurology, the MetLife Award, the Brain Prize, and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Award of the DFG. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Leopoldina (German Academy of Sciences) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. My research revolves around neural and cognitive networks in healthy ageing and neurodegenerative disorders. I am interested in distinct alterations of brain network topology that reflect specific psychopathology traits but also neural changes that reveal transdiagnostic brain network features, e.g. cognitive impairments as encountered in both schizophrenia as well as age-related dementias. To this end, I employ graphtheoretical analyses on neuroimaging cognitive data to characterize the the network impacts of cognitive impairments and investigate possible targets for treatments.

Dr. Mihály Hajós is Chief Scientific Officer at Cognito Therapeutics. He joins Cognito with an accomplished background in both industry and academia. Prior to Cognito, Dr. Hajós made important contributions to therapy development programs as Head of Experimental and Translational Neurophysiology at Biogen, with a focus on using neurophysiological methods to study the mode of action of current and potential pharmacotherapies. He has also contributed to the design of multiple clinical proof-of-mechanism and proof-of-concept studies at Pfizer. His most recent work has been centered on neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s disease, fronto-temporal dementia, and Huntington’s disease. Prior to his current appointment as adjunct professor at Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Hajós held a faculty position in clinical medicine at University of Oxford. Dr. Hajós earned a Ph.D. in medical sciences from University of Göteborg, Sweden and a Pharm. D. in human physiology and pathophysiology from A. Szent-Györgyi Medical University, Hungary.

Quinton recently completed his Master of science at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute under the supervision of Dr. Michael Schlossmacher. During this time, he worked to understand whether the PD-associated gene GBA1 has a role in host response to infection in mice to better understand the etiology of typical PD and GBA1-linked PD. He is now working under the co-supervision of Dr. Michael Schlossmacher and Dr. Steffany Bennett, expanding on his MSc. findings to understand the role that lipids play in GBA1-mediated effects in the murine host response to infection.

Sara Hall is a postdoc researcher at the Clinical Memory Research Unit, Malmö, Lund University, Sweden in Professor Oskar Hansson´s research group. Her research is focused on diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in CSF and blood in Parkinsonian disorders, with a special interest in the cognitive aspects of these disorders. She is also a consultant physician at the Memory Clinic, Skane University Hospital, Malmö, Sweden. Sara graduated from Medical School at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden in 2002. During her residency at the Neurology Clinic in Lund, Sweden she was also active in the creation of the Parkinsonian cohort in the prospective, longitudinal Swedish BioFINDER study as part of her graduate studies. In 2017 she obtained her PhD, defending her thesis “Biomarkers in Parkinson’s disease and related disorders, Diagnostic value of biochemical markers, and their relation to disease progression”. The same year she became a specialist in Neurology. In 2017 she received the Bundy Academy Award for Neurology.

Harald J. Hampel, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., M.A., serves as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of the Neurology Business Group at Eisai Inc. and as a member of the company’s Executive Committee for the Americas. As CMO, Dr. Hampel is responsible for leading Eisai’s global medical affairs strategy and providing medical expertise in neurology with the aim of developing targeted solutions to prevent and treat neurological conditions. With more than 25 years of experience conducting clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related neurodegenerative diseases, Dr. Hampel provides executive direction and medical guidance in the planning and implementation of Eisai’s global therapeutic pipeline which includes AD, other dementia, epilepsy and sleep/wake disorders. He is also responsible for developing the global neurology medical affairs strategies for the company’s commercial products, pipeline assets and late-stage compounds approaching the commercialization stage.

Dr. Oskar Hansson gained his PhD in neurobiology in 2001 and his M.D. in 2005. He became senior consultant in neurology in 2012 at Skåne University Hospital, Sweden, and full professor of neurology in 2017 at Lund University, Sweden. Oskar Hansson has performed internationally recognized clinical and translational research focusing on the earliest phases of Alzheimer's and Parkinson’s diseases. His landmark study on cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease from 2006 (Hansson et al, The Lancet Neurology, 2006) has been instrumental for the implementation of these biomarkers in the clinical work-up of Alzheimer's disease in Sweden and internationally. His work on biomarkers has led to over 350 original peer-reviewed publications. Ten years ago, he started the prospective and longitudinal Swedish BioFINDER study (www.biofinder.se), where the research team focuses on the development of optimized diagnostic algorithms for early diagnosis, and also studies the consequences of different brain pathologies on cognitive, neurologic and psychiatric symptoms in healthy individuals and patients with dementia and parkinsonian disorders. Recently, the BioFINDER team has shown that tau-PET can differentiate Alzheimer’s from other neurodegenerative diseases (Ossenkoppele et al, JAMA, 2018), and that plasma P-tau is a novel promising blood-based biomarker for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (Janelidze et al, Nature Medicine, 2020; Palmqvist et al, JAMA, 2020, Nature Medicine, 2021). Besides being responsible for the outpatient ward of the Memory Clinic at Skåne University Hospital, he is also in leading positions of several research networks and he is co-director of the strategic research area of neuroscience at Lund University.

Cheshire Hardcastle is a 5th year graduate student at the University of Florida in the Clinical and Health Psychology doctoral program with a concentration in neuropsychology. Under the mentorship of Dr. Adam Woods, Cheshire studies functional brain changes that accompany computerized multi-domain cognitive training interventions in healthy older adults. She hopes that this findings from her research can help make cognitive trainings more efficacious for older adults in reducing dementia risk.

I'm a Senior Research Fellow based at the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI), University College London. My research is focused on using imaging techniques such as MRI alongside molecular and cellular approaches to understand the pathological processes involved in neurodegeneration, in particular, in Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease animal models. In recent work I have focussed on investigating the role of the glymphatic system in neurodegenerative disease, applying novel imaging strategies to quantify glymphatic function in disease models, and accessing the involvement of this system in the propagation of pathological protein species in the brain.

Professor John Harrison is an expert psychologist with a special interest in cognition. John is Principal Consultant at Metis Cognition, a psychology practice established to advise with the selection and successful integration of cognitive testing into therapeutic development programs. He is also an Associate Professor with the AUmc Alzheimer Center and Visiting Professor at King’s College London. He holds Chartered Psychologist status and has authored/co-authored more than 100 books and scientific articles, including a popular neuroscience book ‘Synaesthesia: The Strangest Thing’.