Michael W. Weiner M.D. is the Director of the Magnetic Resonance Unit at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco, and Professor of Radiology, Medicine, Psychiatry and Neurology at UC San Francisco. He was one of the first scientists to obtain MRS spectra from an intact animal, and has published over 310 peer reviewed journal publications, of which 250 have been clinical MRI/MRS studies.

Paul Aisen is Professor of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Director of the Alzheimer’s Diseases Cooperative study (ADCS). The ADCS has completed several clinical trials with major public health impact including studies of high dose vitamin E, studying the effects of estrogens on AD progression and examining the ability of Vitamin E and Aricept to prevent progression from MCI to AD.

Ronald Petersen is the Director of the ADC at Mayo Clinic and Professor of Neurology. He has carried out extensive studies in subjects transitioning from Normal to AD and has developed the concept of mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Clifford Jack is the most prominent neuroradiologist in the AD field. His major contribution has been to describe the changes in the volume of the hippocampus in AD and MCI compared to elderly controls, to describe the rates of change in these populations, and to correlate these changes with cognition and transitions to MCI and to AD.

Dr William Jagust has been involved in the use of imaging to study aging and dementia since the early studies using PET to investigate glucose metabolism in patients with AD. His work has included FDG-PET, structural MRI, functional MRI, and most recently amyloid imaging with PET. His laboratory was the first to describe Alzheimer’s-related hippocampal atrophy quantified with MRI, and has continued to pioneer approaches using multimodal imaging to study aging and dementia.

John Morris is a member of the Alzheimer’s Association’s Medical & Scientific Advisory Committee. He chairs the Clinical Task Force for the NIA’s Alzheimer’s Disease Centers program. He is author or co-author of over 300 peer-reviewed journal articles and 50 chapters and reviews. He edited the the first and second editions of the Handbook of Dementing Illnesses.

Dr. Saykin joined the Indiana University School of Medicine faculty in November 2006 as director of a new transdisciplinary center of excellence in neuroimaging. His own NIH and foundation sponsored research program focuses on the use of brain imaging and genomic methods to study mechanisms of memory dysfunction and treatment response in neurological and psychiatric disorders.

John Trojanowski’s research focuses on the role of protein misfolding in neurodegeneration, which is a core disease mechanism shared by Alzheimer’s (AD), Parkinson’s (PD) and related disorders. Since early diagnosis of AD is critical to developing effective AD therapies, Dr. Trojanowski exploits insights into disease mechanisms to develop and validate relevant and informative AD biomarkers.

Arthur Toga is a professor of Neurology at USC, founder and Director of the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging (LONI), Co-Director of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center and the founding editor of the journal, NeuroImage. He is a member of the UCLA Brain Research Institute and past Director of Admissions of the Neuroscience Graduate Program. Dr. Toga has a career-long funding and publication record in the analysis, registration and modeling of structural and functional images obtained from many species, including humans.

Laurel Beckett has been involved in AD research for many years. She was the biostatistician for the East Boston AD studies that first estimated the population prevalence and incidence of AD and projected those numbers to the US population. Her methodological research in longitudinal studies and population based studies has helped to describe patterns and correlates of clinical decline both in AD and in the general population.