Dr. Paciotti obtained her MS degree in Pharmaceutical Biotechnologies at the University of Perugia. Then after a traineeship at the Department of Biochemistry of the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), she received her PhD in Biology and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Perugia. Her studies focus on the development of new biomarkers for the diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders with particular attention to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Dr. Paciotti is responsible for the project “Development of novel pathway-based CSF biomarkers for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease”, funded by the Italian Alzheimer's Research Association (Airalzh). She is also involved in international projects for the discovery and validation of new cerebrospinal fluid and blood biomarkers for the early diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders with dementia, under the supervision of Prof. Lucilla Parnetti.

Ph.D. student at the department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine in the Amsterdam University Medical Center. Beatriz focuses on the analysis of non-invasive cerebral perfusion measurements using arterial spin labeling MRI, standardization of the image analysis of arterial spin labeling MRI Blood-Brain Barrier (BBB) integrity scans, and creation of a reference atlas of BBB integrity.

Gennaro Pagano, MD, MSc, PhD, eMBA is an Expert Medical Director & Group Leader in the Early development group of Neuroscience and Rare disease (NRD) leading the early clinical development of programs in Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, sleep, and other common and rare disorders at Roche Pharma Research & Early Development (pRED). He is also Chair of NRD Medical Directors Fellowship program. Before joining Roche, Gennaro was the Lily Safra Senior Clinical Fellow in Neurology and Research & Development Leader of the Neurodegeneration Imaging Group, Department of Basic and Clinical Neuroscience, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at the King’s College London. In this role, he designed, implemented and led several Phase 0, 1 and Phase 2 proof-of-concept trials, with 90+ peer-reviewed publications in the field of common and rare movement disorders and dementias (h-index: 38). He obtained a Doctor of Medicine (MD) at University of Naples Federico II, Master in Epidemiology (MSc) at University of Milan, Executive Master in Business and Administration (eMBA) at Quantic School of Business and Technology, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Clinical Neuroscience at King’s College London and postdoctoral training in PET molecular imaging with focus on genetics, preclinical and prodromal Parkinson’s disease at Imperial College London. He also completed fellowships in movement disorders and neuroimaging at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Gennaro is an Honorary Clinical Associate Professor at University of Exeter Medical School, London, with broad hands-on experience across multiple therapeutic areas, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, common and rare movement disorders (e.g. Huntington’s disease), epilepsy and sleep disorders. Gennaro is a servant leader who encourages colleagues to step outside of their comfort zones and show intelligent disobedience, using a collaborative, inspiring and empowering style and micromanage-free guidance.

Neuroscientist

Lene Pålhaugen is PhD student at the University of Oslo and Akershus University Hospital. She is also working as a physician specializing in neurology. As part of her PhD she has performed clinical assessment of participants in the longitudinal multi-center Dementia Disease Initiation study. In the first paper of the PhD, she examined regional white matter hyperintensity load visible on MRI scans in preclinical sporadic AD cases and assessed the utility of posterior white matter hyperintensities as an early-stage AD marker. In the second paper (in manuscript), she assess the interaction of vascular risk and APOEe4 status on CSF amyloid levels in non-demented older adults, and the results will be presented at AD/PD 2023.

Sebastian Palmqvist is a senior consultant neurologist at the Memory Clinic of Skåne University Hospital in Malmö and an associate professor in neuroscience at Lund University in Sweden. During the last 15 years, dr Palmqvist’s research has been focused on cognitive assessments and biomarkers in Alzheimer’s disease for improving clinical diagnostics. He has published more than 100 articles including first/last author publications in journals such as JAMA, Nature Medicine, Brain, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, EMBO Molecular Medicine and Neurology. Dr Palmqvist is active as a clinician, researcher, teacher and supervisor.

Francisco was born in La Coruña (Spain). and studied Medicine at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, after finishing his studies he did his residency in Neurology and a PhD in Neurology at the Technical University Dresden with Prof. Reichmann with a La Caixa-DAAD grant. After finishing his medical PhD and in parallel to his activity as clinician at the neurology clinic, he obtained a Pedro Barrié de la Maza grant and enroled the PhD Program from the International Max-Planck Research School within the Max-Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics. Here, he obtained a PhD in Neuroscience studying the link between environmental toxins and the appearance and progression of Parkinson’s disease pathology with summa cum laude (no se si necesitas decir esto, yo lo pongo y tu quitas lo que consideres). After his PhD, he joined the labs of Prof. Teymuras Kurzchalia and Prof. Antony Hyman at same institute in a joined project as postdoc. In 2014 he started as Leader of a Clinician Scientist Group at the Excellence Cluster for Systems Neurology in Munich within the Department of Neurology at the LMU University Hospital, where he combined clinical and research work. In 2017 he moved his lab to the Department of Psychiatry within the same hospital to also do his residency in Psychiatry. Since then he has been combining his clinical activity as neurologist and psychiatrist with his research activity as PI.

Psychologist and PhD Student at University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia.

Dominik Paquet is an expert for induced pluripotent stem cells, CRISPR/Cas genome engineering, 3D tissue engineering and the application of these technologies for research on neurodegenerative and neurovascular diseases. He has been a Professor at the University of Munich and member of the Munich Cluster of Systems Neurology (SyNergy) since 2016 and leads a research lab at the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (ISD) of the University Hospital in Munich. Dominik Paquet holds a degree in Biology from the University of Tübingen and a doctorate in Biochemistry and Pharmacology from the University of Munich. Previously, he worked for five years as a postdoctoral fellow with Marc Tessier-Lavigne at The Rockefeller University in New York, USA, where he published seminal studies on CRISPR/Cas genome engineering and disease modeling of Alzheimer’s and related dementias in iPSCs. Dr. Paquet received several research awards including the International Leda-Hanin- and Verum-Awards for Alzheimer’s Disease research, the Young Investigator Award of the Universität Bayern, the Sanofi iAward Europe, as well as fellowships from the Elite Network of Bavaria, German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and The New York Stem Cell Foundation.

Kristeen majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University of California, Davis and she earned her PhD in Pharmacology at Cornell University. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the Buck Institute in Dr. Tara Tracy's laboratory. In the Tracy lab, she is investigating how the KIBRA protein repairs tau-mediated synapse dysfunction. Kristeen is interested in the relationship between KIBRA, tau and cognition in Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Parhizkar is interested in understanding the mechanisms by which changes in sleep influence Alzheimer’s disease pathology. Her research focuses on the role of sleep in the glia-immune signaling that contribute to neurodegenerative processes in Alzheimer’s disease. She obtained her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience from University of Nottingham, together with an industrial placement year at Eli Lilly. She received her PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in the laboratory of Dr. Christian Haass. Dr. Parhizkar is currently performing her postdoctoral research with Dr. David Holtzman at Washington University School of Medicine.

Loukia did her undergraduate studies at the University of Sheffield, UK, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Athens, Greece. She then joined the laboratory of Neurogenetics at the National Institute on Aging for her postdoctoral training at a very exciting time for the genetics of Parkinson's disease. The laboratory made significant advancements showing that mutations in a gene called LRRK2 cause Parkinson's disease. This sparked her scientific interest in attempting to understand the molecular basis of Parkinson's disease using familial forms of the disease, focusing on LRRK2 and α-synuclein. Her efforts to explore the effects of LRRK2 mutations in PD provided novel insights into the undetermined role of the LRRK2 protein. This led to several murine mouse models and a series of cellular and molecular experimental tools to facilitate LRRK2 research. She then joined the Feinberg School of Medicine and launched her independent research program where she focused on cell type dysfunctions with LRRK2 mutations.

Jin-Kyoung Park, MMT, KCMT, is a doctoral student of music therapy and a researcher at the Music Rehabilitation Center at Ewha Womans University in South Korea. E-mail: jinkobox@gmail.com