Joyce E. Balls-Berry, PhD
Dr. Joyce (Joy) E. Balls-Berry is a psychiatric epidemiologist and health educator. Her primary research focuses on applying community and patient engaged research principles in diverse populations to reduce health disparities and increase health equity. Much of Balls-Berry's research centers on determining ways to increase diversity and inclusion in clinical and translational science.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Dongming Cai, MD, PhD
Dr. Dongming Cai is the Grossman Center Director, a Professor of Neurology at The University of Minnesota, and a Physician Scientist at The Minneapolis VA Health Care System. By combining expertise in basic neuroscience and clinical neurology, her laboratory studies focus on translating current understanding of disease mechanisms into development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for Alzheimer’s Disease, traumatic brain injury and other neurodegenerative diseases. She also provides outpatient care for civilians and veterans with cognitive impairment at St Louis Park Memory Clinic, VA GRECC, and Neurology teaching clinics.
Opening Remarks
Lindsay Clark, PhD
Dr. Lindsay Clark is a clinical neuropsychologist and the Clinical Core Co-Leader for the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Dr. Clark's clinical research interests include (1) improving detection and access to dementia diagnosis through digital cognitive tools and (2) understanding the personal (e.g., psychosocial, behavioral) implications of early diagnosis and developing best practices for AD biomarker disclosure. Dr. Clark provides neuropsychological expertise as a collaborator on several studies focused on improving detection and diagnosis of cognitive changes associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Joseph E. Gaugler, PhD
Dr. Gaugler is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and the Robert L. Kane Endowed Chair in Long-Term Care and Aging at the University of Minnesota's School of Public Health. He is also the director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Innovation. Dr. Gaugler’s research examines the sources and effectiveness of long-term care for persons with Alzheimer's disease and other chronic conditions. An applied gerontologist, Dr. Gaugler's interests include Alzheimer's disease and long-term care, the longitudinal ramifications of family care for persons with dementia and other chronic conditions, and the effectiveness of community-based and psychosocial services for older adults with dementia and their caregiving families. Underpinning these substantive areas, Dr. Gaugler also has interests in mixed methods and implementation science.
Moderator
Carey Gleason, PhD, MS
Carey Gleason is a researcher and clinician interested in improving timely identification of and intervention for memory disorders in underserved communities. She seeks to identify targets to modify risk for Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans and Native Americans, groups traditionally under-included in research. Promoting collaboration, partnership and building trust are core pillars in Carey’s research philosophy.
Moderator
Michael Greicius, MD, MPH
Dr. Greicius is the Iqbal Farrukh and Asad Jamal Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University. Dr. Greicius is the founding director of the Stanford Center for Memory Disorders and is the Associate Director of the Stanford Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. He leads a research team studying the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Tiffany Hensley-McBain, PhD
Dr. Hensley-McBain serves as the Associate Course Director for immunology at TouroCOM Montana and is also a principal investigator at the McLaughlin Research Institute. The Hensley-McBain lab studies the immune mediators that connect microbial dysbiosis to disease using mouse models and in vitro systems to inform targeted therapeutic approaches for chronic inflammatory conditions, including neurodegenerative diseases and chronic viral infections.
Panelist
Kristen Jacklin, PhD
Dr. Kristen Jacklin is Executive Director of the Memory Keepers Medical Discovery Team on Health Disparities at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Duluth campus, and is a Professor in the Department of Family Medicine and BioBehavioral Health. Dr. Jacklin is a medical anthropologist with an extensive background in community-based Indigenous health research and health equity. Her research focuses on chronic disease care for Indigenous peoples, including investigations concerning aging; cognitive health and dementia; diabetes; and Indigenous health/medical education.
Panelist
Thomas K. Karikari, PhD
Dr. Thomas Karikari is an internationally recognized expert in plasma biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease. His research focuses on improving our understanding of the mechanistic and biochemical basis of neurodegenerative proteinopathies in the human brain and biofluids, and applying this knowledge to the development of diagnostic and therapeutic tools for clinical use. At the national level, Dr. Karikari leads the Fluid Biomarker Core of the National Institute on Aging (NIA) Alzheimer’s Program Project Grant, where his research integrates fundamental and translational neuroscience with a strong focus on clinical applications.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Brendan Lucey, MD, MSCI
Lucey’s current research focuses on sleep, aging and Alzheimer’s disease. His lab explores the potential of sleep interventions to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. He is interested in whether changes in sleep could serve as non-invasive markers for the progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
Moderator
William Mantyh, MD
Dr. William Mantyh is an associate professor and behavioral neurologist specializing in the diagnosis and care for neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body disease, Frontotemporal dementia, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. His research expertise is the development of blood and imaging biomarkers for neurodegenerative disease. In particular, he currently seeks to expand the applicability of revolutionary new blood tests for Alzheimer's disease to underrepresented patients and 'real world' settings that are more complicated than clinical trial populations.
Moderator
Jerome Mertens, PhD
Dr. Jerome Mertens is an associate professor in the Department of Neurosciences at UCSD and Adjunct at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA. Dr. Mertens completed his PhD in the lab of Oliver Brüstle (University of Bonn) and Philipp Koch, and his postdoc in Rusty Gage’s lab. The Mertens Lab uses cellular reprogramming technologies to develop the next generation of human aging models in order to identify the key molecules driving human aging and ultimately inform new treatment strategies for age-related neurodegenerative diseases.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Savana Naini, PsyD, LP
Dr. Naini is a generalist practitioner servicing a wide range of medical and neurological conditions, including dementia, movement disorders, cerebrovascular disease, neuro-oncology, autoimmune diseases, as well as surgical candidacy (e.g., solid organ transplant and deep brain stimulation). She specializes in older adult populations and neurodegenerative diseases.
Moderator
Joel Steele, PhD, MA
Dr. Joel S. Steele, an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate and Fort Peck Tribes, is the Principal Investigator for the University of North Dakota Indigenous Trauma & Resilience Research Center. A quantitative psychologist by training, Dr. Steele holds deep expertise in advanced statistical modeling, longitudinal and dyadic data analysis, and innovative approaches to studying aging, Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
Panelist
Li-San Wang, PhD
Dr. Li-San Wang's research interests include genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia and computational methods for big data in genomics research. Dr. Wang co-directs the Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center (PNGC), part of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. PNGC studies genetics of Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementia. Dr. Wang also serves as the Co-Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science for Integrated Diagnostics and as the Associate Dean for Computing in the Perelman School of Medicine.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
David R. Wilson, PhD
Dr. Wilson is a member of the Navajo Nation and formerly worked in Washington, D.C., as a senior policy advisor with the White House Council on Native American Affairs. He previously served as the inaugural Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Tribal Health Research Office. He received his bachelor’s degree and PhD from Arizona State University.
Panelist
Joseph M. Yracheta, MS
Joseph M. Yracheta is an Amerindigenous Scientist (P’urhepecha y Raramuri from Mexico) at the Native BioData Consortium which exists within the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation (Sioux) of South Dakota. Mr. Yracheta has been a scientist since 1990 where he started as a bench biotechnician and worked across many biomedical disciplines. He believes that all data and resources must be seen as unforeseen futures, where their value will constantly change. He feels this data must be secured for Indigenous economic and cultural sustainability.
Keynote Speaker, Panelist
Shauna Yuan, PhD
Dr. Shauna Yuan, Associate Professor of Neurology and Principal Investigator of the Yuan Lab, is a Grossman Center faculty member. Her research interests include Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis and induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology.
Moderator
Henrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD
Henrik Zetterberg is a Professor of Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and University College London, UK, and a Clinical Chemist at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg, leads the UK DRI Fluid Biomarker Laboratory at UCL, and is a Key Member of the Hong Kong Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. His main research focus and clinical interest are fluid biomarkers for brain diseases, neurodegenerative diseases in particular.
Keynote Speaker