Christian Tackenberg is the Scientific Head of Stem Cell Research at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine (IREM), University of Zurich. Further, he is a group leader at the Neuroscience Center Zurich and a lecturer for the Faculty of Science. His research focus is the application of cellular (stem cell-derived) models to uncover pathomechanisms of Alzheimer’s disease and the establishment of stem cell-based regenerative therapies for brain diseases such as stroke.

Raquel N. Taddei is an MD and neurologist currently pursuing her PhD at Harvard University (USA) and University College London (UK). After obtaining her medical degree from the universities of Madrid and Munich she trained as a neurology resident in a number of university hospitals (Zurich, Geneva, Bern, and London). She obtained her Swiss and UK accredited neurologist diploma in 2020 and moved to Boston (USA) thereafter to pursue her academic career in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) dementia research. Her current PhD work focuses on glial derangements in earliest stages of tau pathology in human AD brains with the aim to disentangle the complexity of glial-tau interactions at the synapses in very early stages of the disease, and understand their association with cognitive impairment in AD. She has been supported by a number of scholarships and fellowships in 2021 and 2022 (Harvard University, USA), and has recently obtained her USA medical board license to pursue a sub-specialty training in clinical dementia, for which she has been appointed as a Clinical Fellow in Dementia (Growdon fellowship) at Massachusetts General Hospital led by Dr Gomez-Isla and starting in 2022.

Giulio Taglialatela earned his MS in biological sciences in 1984 and his PhD in pharmacology in 1988, both at the University of Rome La Sapienza in Italy. He was appointed a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology (BMB) at UTMB in 1988 and completed his training in 1990. He came back to UTMB in 1993 as a research assistant professor and rose through the ranks to his appointment as a tenured professor in the Department of Neuroscience & Cell Biology in 2011. In 2014, Dr. Taglialatela became the vice chair for research of the Department of Neurology and the director of the UTMB Mitchell Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, and was endowed as the Lawrence J. Del Papa Distinguished Chair in Neurodegenerative Disease Research. While maintaining a continuously NIH-funded research laboratory in the past 20+ years focusing on molecular events in neurodegeneration and resilience, he has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, delivered invited talks at national and international institutions and scientific meetings. He served on several national and international grant review panels, and served as a permanent appointed member and chair of the Clinical Neuroscience & Neurodegeneration study section at the National Institutes of Health.

I did my Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of Cagliari, Italy ( 2007-2010), I have continued my academic career as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California, USA (2010-2012). In 2012 I won a Mari Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow Grant for the PET-BRAIN project between Pharmaness-Neuroscienze Italy and the University of Aberdeen (Scotland, UK) (2012-2014). Since 2014 I have worked at the NVS Department at Karolinska Institutet, where I have recently started a new independent research line. During my Ph.D. and first postdoctoral research, I have primarily studied the endocannabinoid system as a therapeutic target for the treatment of inflammation and neurological disorders. At Karolinska, I have been studying the anti-Alzheimer role of the BRICHOS domain, a naturally occurring chaperone domain, which has been shown to inhibit the Aβ aggregation and, most importantly, neurotoxicity. My current research is focused on characterizing the AD pathophysiological role of the intramembrane signal peptide peptidase like 2b. To this end, I employ a broad array of behavioral, biochemical, and molecular biological techniques, as well as I use two new mouse models: the APP-knock-in AppNL-G-F and SPPL2b-/- mice.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING 2005 PhD in Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery, University of Milan, Milan (Italy) 1999 Master in Biological Sciences, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Milan, Milan (Italy) POSITIONS/RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 2013-Present Senior Researcher in Neuroscience, Institute Baulieu, U1195 Inserm, Paris-Saclay University, Le Kremlin Bicêtre (France) 2011-2013 Researcher in Neuroscience, Dept of Experimental Medical Sciences, Lund University, Lund (Sweden) 2010-2011 Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Dept of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York (USA) 2007-2010 Instructor in Neuroscience, Dept of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York (USA) 2005-2007 Post-doctoral Associate in Neuroscience, Dept of Neurology and Neuroscience, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York (USA) SCIENTIFIC EVALUATION ACTIVITIES *Grant ad hoc Reviewer - Alzheimer’s Association (USA) - European Research Executive Agency (REA) - Association of British Neurologists (ABN) - French National Research Agency (ANR) PUBLICATIONS Articles 1. Klionsky DJ,..., Tampellini D et al. (2021) Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for moni-toring autophagy. Autophagy. Feb 8:1-382. doi: 10.1080/15548627.2020.1797280. 2. Akwa Y, Gondard E, Mann A, Capetillo-Zarate E, Alberdi E, Matute C, Marty S, Vaccari T, Lozano AM, Baulieu EE, Tampellini D (2018) Synaptic activity protects against AD and FTD-like pathology via autophagic-lysosomal degradation. Mol. Psychiatry 23(6): 1530-1540 3. Mann A, Gondard E, Tampellini D, Milsted JAT, Marillac D, Hamani C, Kalia SK, Lozano AM (2018) Chronic deep brain stimulation in an Alzheimer’s disease mouse model enhances memory and reduces pathological hallmarks Brain Stimul. 11(2): 435-444. Tampellini D, Rahman N, Lin MT, Capetillo-Zarate E and Gouras GK (2011) Impaired β-amyloid secretion in Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. J. Neurosci., 31(43):15384-15390 4. Tampellini D, Capetillo-Zarate E, Dumont M, Huang Z, Yu F, Lin MT and Gouras GK (2010) Effects of synaptic modulation on β-amyloid, synaptophysin and memory performance in Alzheimer’s disease transgenic mice. J. Neurosci. 30(43): 14299-14304 5. Tampellini D, Rahman N, Gallo EF, Huang Z, Dumont M, Capetillo-Zarate E, Ma T, Zheng R, Lu B, Nanus DM, Lin MT and Gouras GK (2009) Synaptic activity reduces intraneuronal β-amyloid, promotes APP transport to synapses and protects against β-amyloid -related synaptic alterations. J. Neurosci. 29(31): 9704-9713 Reviews 1. Tampellini D (2015) Synaptic activity and Alzheimer’s disease: a critical update. Front. Neurosci. 9(423): 1-7 2. Tampellini D and Gouras GK (2010) Synapses, synaptic activity and intraneuronal Aβ in Alzheimer’s disease. Front. Aging Neurosci. 2(13): 1-5 Book chapters 1. Tampellini D and Gouras GK (2011) Analysis of vesicular trafficking in primary neurons by live-imaging. Methods Mol. Biol. 793: 343-350

Heikki Tanila is Professor of Translational Neuroscience at A. I. Virtanen Institute, Univ. Eastern Finland in Kuopio, Finland, since 2005 and at present also the Director of the Institute. He got his MD in 1988 and PhD in 1993 at Univ. Helsinki, Finland. He did his post-doctoral fellowship at SUNY at Stony Brook, NY, USA in the laboratory of prof. Howard Eichenbaum during 1993-1995 and was a visiting scientist at The Picower Institute, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA in the laboratory of prof. Matthew Wilson in 2011. His research has focused on age-related memory impairment and early pathophysiological steps in Alzheimer's disease. He has used both aged rats and genetically modified mice as disease models and applied various in vivo electrophysiological recording techniques, behavioral testing and a variety of histopathological methods in his research. More recently, he has also combined morphological analysis and EEG recordings in rodents with in vivo structural and functional MRI in collaboration with Professor Olli Gröhn at A. I. Virtanen Institute. He has contributed to over 200 international peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited over 10,000 times.

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Co-Director of the McCance Center for Brain Health, Co-Director of the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, and Vice-Chair of Neurology (Research), at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tanzi co-discovered the first three Alzheimer’s disease genes, including APP and directs the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Alzheimer’s Genome Project, which identified the first neuroinflammation-related Alzheimer’s gene, CD33. He has also been developing therapies for treating and preventing AD using 3D human neural glial culture models of AD and is now testing them in various clinical trials. Dr. Tanzi has published over 600 papers, received numerous awards, including the Metropolitan Life Award, Potamkin Prize, Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, and was one of the TIME100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Tanzi is a New York Times bestselling author, who co-authored “Decoding Darkness” “Super Brain”, “Super Genes”, and “The Healing Self”.

Nick is Head of Technology Strategy at Cambridge Cognition. He has 20 years software engineering experience, with a background in the translation of academic research into successful commercial products. Nick joined Cambridge Cognition to launch CANTAB Mobile, an EU & FDA certified dementia screening tool for primary care. Nick went on to lead the development and deployment of mobile and wearable cognitive assessments in the context of pharmaceutical trials. Since 2016 Nick has co-led R&D at Cambridge Cognition, most notably developing the NeuroVocalix platform for automated administration and scoring of voice-based cognitive assessments. Nick has also been involved in several industry and academic research collaborations exploring novel digital biomarkers related to neurological and psychiatric disease.

Irina Tarasova, MD, PhD, has been Leading researcher of the Research Institute for Complex Issues of Cardiovascular Diseases since 2009. Affiliation: Laboratory of Neurovascular Pathology Education: Novosibirsk State Medical University, the Faculty of General Medicine (2002). Research and Professional Experience: Cognitive disorders in patients undergoing cardiac surgery: electrophysiological evidences. EEG study of cognitive problem solving, Professional Appointments: Neurophysiology, EEG Signal Processing, Cognitive Neuroscience. Publications Last 5 Years: 1. Tarasova IV, Trubnikova OA, Syrova ID, Barbarash OL. Long-Term Neurophysiological Outcomes in Patients Undergoing Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting. Braz J Cardiovasc Surg. 2021 Oct 17;36(5):629-638. doi: 10.21470/1678-9741-2020-0390. 2. Tarasova IV, Razumnikova OA, Trubnikova OA, Mezentsev YA, Kupriyanova DS, Barbarash OL. Neirofiziologicheskie korrelyaty posleoperatsionnykh kognitivnykh rasstroistv [Neurophysiological correlates of postoperative cognitive disorders]. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova. 2021;121(2):18-23. Russian. doi: 10.17116/jnevro202112102118. 3. Tarasova I.V., Volf N.V., Akbirov R.M., Kukhareva I.N., Barbarash O.L. Event-related desynchronization/synchronization of electrical brain activity during modified odd-ball tasks in patients with coronary artery disease and mild cognitive impairment. Hum Physiol. 2020; 46: 58–65. doi: 10.1134/S0362119719060136 4. Tarasova IV, Akbirov RM, Tarasov RS, Trubnikova OA, Barbarash OL. Electric brain activity in patients with simultaneous coronary artery bypass grafting and carotid endarterectomy. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova. 2019;119(7):41-47. doi: 10.17116/jnevro201911907141.PMID: 31464288 Russian. 5. Tarasova IV, Trubnikova OA, Barbarash OL. EEG and clinical factors associated with mild cognitive impairment in coronary artery disease patients. Dement Geriatr Cogn Disord. 2018;46(5-6):275-284. doi: 10.1159/000493787.

Post-doctoral researcher of the Diseases Network Research Centre (CIBER), part of the Translational Research in Respiratory Medicine (TRRM) research group from the Biomedical Research Institute of Lleida (IRBLleida). Research interests comprise the study of Sleep and Circadian rhythms in different contexts including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, obstructive sleep apnea, and COVID-19.

Jean-Marc Taymans, PhD/Ir, is a Bio-engineer from the KU Leuven (Belgium, 1994). He started his professional career as a vaccine process engineer at SmithKline-Beecham Biologicals (Rixensart, Belgium, 1995-99) before starting PhD research at the graduate school of Neurosciences in Amsterdam (Free University of Amsterdam). He performed his doctoral research in the research labs of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (Beerse, Belgium, 1999-2003), studying schizophrenia-related proteins in the basal ganglia. In 2004 Dr. Taymans joined the KU Leuven to research the molecular pathogenesis of Parkinson’s disease genes. From 2009-2010 he was a Fulbright scholar at the National Institutes of Health, working with Dr. Mark R. Cookson. He joined the Jean-Pierre Aubert Research Center in Lille (France), a mixed Inserm - Université de Lille - Lille University Hospital center, in October 2014 to further develop PD protein signaling studies while integrating clinical translation of experimental findings in patient biosamples. In September 2017, he was appointed Associate Professor in Neuroscience at the Université de Lille. Dr. Taymans’s research has focused since 2004 on the cellular signaling processes of LRRK2, using a multidisciplinary approach from biochemical analysis to cellular models to in vivo validation in models and the application of this knowledge to therapeutic and clinical biomarker applications.

Dr. Julia TCW is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and a director of the Laboratory of Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapeutics at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. TCW received Ph.D. and A.M. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University with research studies in induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) reprogramming in the Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. She then was a Druckenmiller Fellow awarded from New York Stem Cell Foundation and became a faculty in the Department of Neuroscience, Genetics and Genomic Sciences and Ronald M. Loeb Center for Alzheimer’s Disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Dr. TCW’s research program utilized iPSC technology and forward genetic approach to identify molecular and cellular dysfunctions in human brains by Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genetic risk. Her ongoing work includes identifying cell type specific defects by Apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) risk and developing in vitro and in vivo human brain model system by engineering human genome. She is also collaborating with the industry to find a drug target for AD.

Dr. Tesi has been President, Chief Executive Officer and acting Chief Medical Officer of since September 2015. From November 2011 to May 2015, INmune Bio is a clinical stage biotech company formed to develop XPro1595 for the treatment of neurodegenerative disease and other inflammatory diseases. Dr. Tesi received his MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine in 1982. Dr. Tesi has been an academic transplant surgeon before joining industry.