Dr. Renaud La Joie [Ren-no Lah Jwah] originally trained in Neuroscience, Neuropsychology, and Neuroimaging in France before moving to California for his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley and then at the UCSF memory and aging center. In his research, he combines multimodal neuroimaging techniques, fluid biomarkers, and neuropsychological measures to study the natural history of Alzheimer’s disease and other age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. His overarching goal is to understand the drivers of clinical heterogeneity and improve our ability to provide patients with a precise diagnosis and prognosis. Dr. La Joie has established strong collaborations with clinicians and neuropathologists to help bridge in vivo and post-mortem measures of brain pathology and guide a rigorous interpretation of in vivo biomarker data.

I'm a PhD-candidate and a core member of the ENIGMA-Parkinson's consortium, focused on identifying markers for alpha-synucleinopathies and subtypes using neuroimaging. I believe strongly that worldwide collaborations in research will play a crucial role in raising our understanding of the pathophysiology of neurological diseases and to enhance effective personalised treatment. Our first collaborative study showed, in a sample of 2367 patients and 1183 healthy controls, distinct patterns of brain structure abnormalities across the clinical stages of Parkinson's disease (https://movementdisorders.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28706). In the following study we will investigate the morphology of the cerebellum and its relation to clinical symptoms.

Miguel Á. Labrador-Espinosa was formally trained in Health Engineering at the University of Seville, Spain. Looking for an interdisciplinary profile, he intensified his technical training and clinical neuroscience knowledge through MSc studies in Data Science and Big Data as well as in Biomedical Research at the University of Seville. Currently, he is developing his PhD at the Neuroimaging section of the Movement Disorders Group at the Instituto de Biomedicina de Sevilla (IBiS), Spain, with a competitive PhD fellowship from the Department of Medicine of the University of Seville. His research focuses on the use of multimodal neuroimaging techniques to better understand the pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease, and to find clinically useful neuroimaging biomarkers that may help early diagnosis and more accurate prognosis of the disease.

Frank LaFerla, Ph.D. Dean and Chancellor’s Professor Dr. Frank LaFerla is the Dean of Biological Sciences and a Chancellor’s Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior. He joined the faculty of UC Irvine in 1995, and has served in several administrative roles including as the founding director of the campus-wide neuroscience graduate program, chair of the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, and director of the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI MIND). In addition to his duties as dean, he is also the director of the NIH-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, a national center of excellence for dementia and also co-directs a U54 NIH grant to develop the next generation of animal models for Alzheimer’s disease. For the majority of his academic career, his research has focused on understanding the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease and other forms of dementia. His scholarly work has had a global influence on the field, as some of the models that his lab has generated have been distributed to 150+ researchers in over 20 countries throughout the world. He has published over 200 original peer-reviewed articles and has been listed among the top 1% cited researchers in his field. He has received several honors for his research accomplishments including the American Health Assistance Foundation’s Ruth Salta Junior Investigator Achievement Award, the Zenith Fellows Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, UCI Distinguished Faculty Research Award, UCI Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Distinguished University Service Award, Promising Work Award from the Metropolitan Life Foundation for Medical Research, and the UCI Lauds and Laurels Distinguished Faculty Service Award. In addition, he was elected as a Fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Neurological Association. In 2020, he was selected as a recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.

I started my scientific career with a degree in biology at the University of Bonn. At the Department of Neurosurgery (University Clinic Bonn) I received my PhD in Neurophysiology and continued my research as a postdoctoral fellow in the field of Neuroscience at McGovern Medical School (UTHealth) in Houston (Texas, USA) and at the University of Regensburg, Germany. In November 2018, I became a research associate in the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer SCAI and since then I have had the opportunity to contribute my Neuroscience expertise to a number of projects, including the "Human Brain Pharmacome", a collaborative project between three Fraunhofer Institutes (SCAI, IAIS, ITMP) with focus on drug repurposing strategies. I develop biological application examples, which are tested in combinatorial in silico - in vitro approaches, in order to identify drug candidates e.g. for therapeutic treatment in the field of neurodegenerative diseases. Further foci of my work are the generation of knowledge graphs for the modeling of neurological and psychiatric diseases as well as the generation of ontologies and terminologies.

Dr. Lamb’s laboratory works on the basic science of Alzheimer’s disease, with a focus on: genetic modifiers identified from mouse and human studies; animal models of Alzheimer’s disease (including Director of the NIH-Funded Model Organism Development and Evaluation for Late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease program, MODEL-AD); microglia and neuronal-microglial communication in the development and progression of Alzheimer’s pathologies; traumatic brain injury as an environmental modifier for the development of Alzheimer’s pathologies; and Alzheimer’s disease drug discovery as Co-Director of the NIH-Funded IU School of Medicine/Purdue UniversityTarget Enablement to Advance Therapy Development for Alzheimer’s Disease (TREAT-AD) Center.

Susan Landau is Associate Research Scientist in the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on understanding the risk factors and pathophysiology that underlie the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s disease, with a particular emphasis on amyloid and tau biomarkers, and implementation of standardized neuroimaging practices across large multisite studies. She is principal investigator of U.S. POINTER Imaging, an ancillary study to the U.S. POINTER Trial that is investigating the effects of lifestyle interventions on Alzheimer’s disease brain biomarkers and cognition in at-risk older adults. She is a PET imaging Core Investigator for the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative and the DOD-ADNI study of aging and imaging biomarkers in Vietnam War Veterans.

Jaren Landen, Ph.D. is a clinical leader with 20 years of global major pharmaceutical experience focused on developing new medicines for patients with unmet medical needs with a passion for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Jaren has extensive experience with clinical trial design leading all phases of clinical development strategy, regulatory interactions, publications, and business development. Jaren is currently the Head of the Early Alzheimer’s Disease group at Biogen where she provides clinical development expertise for all aspects of the AD portfolio. Jaren joined Biogen in 2017 after a 15 year career at Pfizer. While at Pfizer, Jaren worked in the neuroscience clinical development group spanning across indications including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s Disease, pain, and stroke. Jaren has run numerous clinical trials in all phases of clinical development with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease. While at Pfizer, Jaren designed, implemented, and interpreted the results of several anti-amyloid programs as well as a BACE inhibitor and a gamma secretase inhibitor. Jaren worked on several approved products including varenicline and Lyrica. Jaren did her academic training at Emory University in Neuroscience and teaches graduate Biotechnology at Northeastern University as an adjunct professor.

Dr Lane is a clinical director at Roche, working in late stage clinical development.

Dr. Lang is Professor and previous Director of the Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto. He holds the Jack Clark Chair for Parkinson’s Disease Research and the Lily Safra Chair in Movement Disorders. He is the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Program in Parkinson’s Disease, the Rossy Progressive Supranuclear Palsy Program and the Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto. He is one of the most highly cited investigators in the field of Movement Disorders with more than 900 peer-reviewed publications and h-index of 133. His awards and distinctions include: Officer of the Order of Canada, 2010; Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2011; Honorary Member of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) 2014; the first MDS Pan-American Section Leadership Award, 2017; the Weston Brain Institute International Outstanding Achievement Award, 2018; the Dean’s Lifetime Achievement Award for global impact from University of Toronto, 2020 and the Jay Van Andel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Parkinson's Disease Research, 2022.

Lara works as a Clinician Scientist at the Institute of Neurogenetics of the University of Lübeck, Germany. Her main research interest are genetic movement disorders, in particular (monogenic) Parkinson's disease and dystonia. She is a member of the Monogenic Hub of the Global Parkinson's Genetics Program (GP2).

Lars Lannfelt, MD, PhD, Senior Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden A major scientific achievement was the detection of the “Swedish” mutation. This genetic mutation causes Alzheimer’s disease in a large family and leads to 3-5 times increased production of amyloid β (Aβ). Another major scientific breakthrough was the detection of the “Arctic” mutation, found in a family from northern Sweden. The pathogenic effect of the mutation was the propensity to generate soluble aggregated Aβ, protofibrils. These species of Aβ are likely to be harmful, and not only in the Arctic mutation family, but in all Alzheimer’s disease cases. This inspired me to target these toxic Aβ protofibrils with immunotherapy and we developed an antibody selective for Aβ protofibrils, mAb158. The antibody was humanized and named lecanemab (BAN2401). It is now in phase 3 clinical development. In 2003, I co-founded BioArctic, based on the discovery of the Arctic mutation. BioArctic has succeeded in signing a long-term license agreement with Eisai Pharmaceuticals of Japan on the clinical development of lecanemab. Selected Honors 2021 Rudbeck Medal for scientific discoveries 2019 Khalid Iqbql Lifetime Achievement Award in Alzheimer’s Disease Research by Alzheimer’s Association and Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation Grand Research Prize

Patrick Lao earned his PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in a PET neuroimaging lab focused on Alzheimer's disease. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University, expanding his neuroimaging expertise to structural and vascular MRI. His current work as an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University focuses on cerebrovascular contributions to Alzheimer's disease in adults with Down syndrome and adults from minoritized racial/ethnic groups.

Rebeca Lapresa, Ph.D. is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Molecular Neurobiology (Institute of Functional Biology and Genomics, Spanish National Research Council, Spain). She has a broad background in neuroscience with a special focus on amyloid-beta induced neurodegeneration. Her main research area is unravelling the mechanisms through which amyloid-beta induces neuronal damage and the search for genetic biomarkers with prognosis value in Alzheimer´s disease. She has been working under the guidance of prestigious researchers Angeles Almeida and Juan Pedro Bolaños.