As the population of those aged 65 and over continues to grow, so does the diversity of the U.S. population. In fact, by 2060 approximately 27.5% of the population will be Hispanic, 15% will be African American, and 44.3% will be non-Hispanic white. Dr. Sid O'Bryant is the principal investigator of the Health & Aging Brain Study – Health Disparities (HABS-HD), which is the most comprehensive study of Alzheimer’s disease among the three largest racial/ethnic groups in the U.S. ever conducted – African Americans, Hispanics, non-Hispanic whites. The goal of the HABS-HD program is to understand the life course factors, including biological, sociocultural, environmental, and behavioral, that impact risk for Alzheimer’s disease in late life. This work will ultimately lead to population-specific precision medicine approaches to treating and preventing Alzheimer’s disease (i.e., “treating your Alzheimer’s disease”). In addition to being a global leader in health disparities in cognitive aging, Dr. O’Bryant is a global expert in the use of blood-based biomarkers for the generation of a precision medicine approach to novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, Dementia with Lewy Bodies and Alzheimer’s disease among adults with Down Syndrome.

Neurology SpR with a special interest in young onset and genetic forms of dementia. Research interest in fluid biomarkers.

Alyssa N. O'Grady (née Reimer) joined The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) in 2015. In her current role as Vice President, Clinical Research, Alyssa advances MJFF's mission through developing and managing high-impact, flagship clinical studies that advance therapeutic development for global patient value. She is also responsible for setting strategy to enable patient engagement and patient-centricity research. Alyssa is a founding member of the Internal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force at MJFF. Her past roles at MJFF have included managing data and biospecimen resources from MJFF-sponsored and -funded clinical trials and leading a data curation, harmonization, and centralization initiative. Alyssa graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Chemistry and her educational background is in organic synthesis.

Dr. Sinéad O’Sullivan graduated from Trinity College Dublin (TCD) with a BSc in Natural Sciences, specialising in neuroscience. Sinéad subsequently began her PhD studying glial cells and their role in demyelinating diseases, as well as their potential for therapeutic targeting through specific G protein-coupled receptors such as Sphingosine 1-phosphate receptors and CX3CR1 (Fractalkine). During this time, she also gained pharmaceutical research experience through an internship at Novartis (Basel, Switzerland). Upon graduating from her PhD, Sinéad moved to the University of Chicago where she was using electron microscopy to study myelin formation in the developing optic nerve. In 2019 she received a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation in Germany and is currently using animal models of Parkinson’s disease to study alpha-synuclein induced toxicity in the substantia nigra as well as the role of alpha-synuclein in mitochondrial dysfunction within dopaminergic neurons.

Patrick Oeckl, PhD, is a research group leader for Translational Mass Spectrometry/Neuroproteomics and Biomarker Research at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases Ulm (DZNE) and Ulm University Hospital, Department of Neurology, Germany. His interest is to uncover pathophysiological mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and the discovery, validation and implementation of biomarkers in CSF and blood to improve diagnosis, personalized medicine and drug development. He has more than 10 years of experience in biomarker discovery and validation in academia and industry using immunoassays and mass spectrometry with a high expertise in the challenging measurement of low abundant proteins by mass spectrometry in biofluids such as synucleins or neurofilaments. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals.

Tiago Gil Oliveira is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine at University of Minho in Portugal, Research Line Coordinator at the Life and Health Sciences Research Institute (ICVS), Neuroradiologist at Hospital de Braga and Vice-President of the Portuguese Society for Neuroscience. He was a student in the joint MD/PhD program of UMinho, and Columbia University, NYC, USA. He carried out his PhD studies at Columbia, between 2007 and 2010, and his MD studies at UMinho. While studying the role of lipid signaling in Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis, he showed that the ablation of the lipid-modulating enzyme, phospholipase D2, was protective in different Alzheimer’s disease models. Following his MD/PhD, in 2011 he started his own laboratory at the School of Medicine, at UMinho. Using unbiased lipidomic approaches, his laboratory showed that specific lipid signaling pathways were altered in Alzheimer's disease patients and models, and upon exposure to chronic stress, which is a risk factor for Alzheimer's disease, unraveling new potential therapeutic targets. In parallel with his academic work he also continued his medical training in neuroradiology. He is now using lipidomic approaches together with brain imaging to study neurodegenerative disorders.

Kevin Oliveira Hauer is a junior physician working at the Memory Clinic at Skane's Univeristy Hospital. He graduated from the medical program at Lund University 2022 and "neurodegenerative disorders" is his main field of interest. He has recently started as a PhD-student at Lund University (Clinical Memory Research Unit) and the main focus of his PhD-thesis is biomarkers for Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

I am an instructor in the Movements Disorder Program within the department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. I have been studying immunity in Parkinson’s disease (PD) for more than a decade, and I have expertise in T cell immunology, regulatory T cell phenotyping, animal disease modeling, clinical trial translation, and biomarker development. I currently study the use of immunomodulation and neuroprotective immunity to control peripheral immune responses that affect disease progression. My recent focus is to investigate pharmacological pathways to modify adaptive immune responses for PD, Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and neuroHIV and to assess mechanisms of T cell-mediated neurodegeneration and neuroprotection using immunomodulators such as vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF).