Dr. Bilcag Akgun is a medical doctor and has a PhD in Medical Genetics. His particular interest in neuroscience started during medical school and he took part in two research projects on autism genetics while he was a student. Then he pursued a PhD program in medical genetics about detecting novel genes and variants via applications on sequencing technologies. After the PhD, he worked as an assistant professor at the Izmir University of Economics and intensively focused on selecting genomic biomarkers and creating bioinformatics and NGS infrastructure. He is currently working as a Postdoctoral Associate at the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami. Projects he is currently working on are about the genomics of Alzheimer disease in admixed and underrepresented populations.

Dr. Yvette Akwa is a principal researcher at unit 1195 of the French Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) affiliated with Paris Saclay University. She obtained her master’s degree in Physiology/Endocrinology from the University of Tours (France) and her PhD in Life Sciences from the Pierre and Marie Curie University Paris 6. She was a postdoctoral fellow and research associate in the Department of Neuropharmacology at Scripps Research Institute (San Diego, CA) then postdoctoral fellow and team co-leader at Inserm units 488/788. She obtained a permanent position at Inserm in 2004 and received her Research Supervision Authority in Neuroscience from Paris Descartes University in 2015. She worked in the field of Neurosteroids providing solid knowledge on their biosynthesis/metabolism in the brain and their beneficial effects on anxiety-related behaviors and memory. She and her collaborators have now been working for 10 years on protective strategies against amyloid and tau pathologies, including the modulation of excitatory neurotransmission by sulfated steroids, stimulation of synaptic activity and activation of TSPO.

John J. Alam, MD is CEO at CervoMed, co-founding the company (formerly known as EIP Pharma) in 2014. Until May 2014, he was therapeutic area head for diseases of aging at Sanofi, where he led on a global basis discovery and development activities directed at Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. From 1997 to 2008, he held positions of increasing responsibility at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, including Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President, Medicines Development. At Vertex, he played major roles in the development of novel innovative medicines for HIV, Hepatitis C and Cystic Fibrosis. Prior to Vertex, John led the clinical development of Avonex (interferon beta-1a) for multiple sclerosis at Biogen from 1991 to 1997. He received a MD from Northwestern University School of Medicine and a SB in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, he completed an internal medicine residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a post-doctoral fellowship at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Alicia Algeciras-Schimnich, Ph.D., is Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She is co-director of the Clinical Immunoassay Laboratory where she has led the evaluation and clinical implementation of Alzheimer’s disease CSF and blood biomarkers. Dr. Algeciras-Schimnich has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, abstracts, and book chapters. She serves as principal investigator of a number of industry-sponsored studies at Mayo Clinic. Her research interests focus on the Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, biomarkers of neurodegeneration, tumor markers, and the use of multianalyte assays with algorithm analysis (MAAA) in clinical diagnosis.

Current PhD student at the Department of Medical Biophysics, Tremerty Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto. Previous Research Fellow at Molecular Photoscience Research Center, Kobe University, Japan. Finished my MS in Physics and BS in Applied Physics at the De La Sale University - Manila and University of the Philippines respectively.