It’s with great sadness that we mourn the loss of Rahul Desikan, a neuroscientist, neuroradiologist, and leading researcher of neurodegenerative diseases, who passed away in July from an aggressive form of ALS.

Rahul, who was an assistant professor of radiology and biomedical imaging, neurology and pediatrics at UCSF, was an active member of the ADNI community, using its data to publish numerous studies on Alzheimer’s disease that assessed polygenic risk, helped predict the age of onset, and more.

He also studied bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, and ALS and created what became known as the “Desikan atlas,” a widely-used computational brain atlas published in NeuroImage and cited nearly 5,000 times.

We hope you will join us in honoring Rahul’s contributions to ADNI, as well as his larger scientific achievements and courageous spirit.

Kind regards,
Arthur W. Toga and the ADNI community
Director, Laboratory of Neuro Imaging
University of Southern California