World Parkinson Coalition Inc.
1359 Broadway, Suite 1509
New York, NY 10018 USA
info@worldpdcongress.org WPC 2010 Limited
4B, 50 Speirs Wharf, Port Dundas
Glasgow G4 9TB, Scotland, UK
Company: SC355160
Scottish Charity: SCO40591
Copyright © 2004-2009
Join Our List | 
| 
| Email this Page
Speaker Biographies
The following list represents a portion of the speakers who participated as faculty at the World Parkinson Congress. Biographies were submitted voluntarily. A full list of faculty can be found at: www.worldpdcongress.org/Program/featured_speakers.cfm .
Click on the individual names for a short biography.
Ellen Abramson (USA) received a BA from Brown University (Providence, RI) and a MA from The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York, NY). She was Principal of a Solomon Schechter Day School and is currently President of Jewish Family Service of Rockland, Inc.
Twenty-five years ago, Ms. Abramson's husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and because of her experiences as a care-giver, she has advocated for comprehensive and integrated care for her husband and for PD patients, in general. Most recently, her concerns have focused on appropriate in-hospital management of symptoms for patients with Parkinson's disease. Additionally, Ms. Abramson has spoken about care-giving and started a Well-Spouse support group at a hospital near her home.
Patrick Aebischer, MD (US) was trained as an MD (1980) and a Neuroscientist (1983) at the University of Geneva and Fribourg in Switzerland. From 1984 to 1992, he worked at Brown University in Providence (Rhode Island, USA), as an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Medical Sciences. In the fall of 1992, he returned to Switzerland as a Professor and Director of the Surgical Research Division and Gene Therapy Center at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Lausanne. In 1999, Patrick Aebischer was nominated President of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) by the Swiss Federal Council. He took office on March 17th, 2000. His current research focuses on the development of cell and gene transfer approaches for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
J. Eric Ahlskog, Ph.D., M.D. Dr. Ahlskog is Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN and Chair of the Mayo-Rochester Section of Movement Disorders. He is a full-time practicing physician, devoting much of his practice to patients with parkinsonism. He has written extensively on Parkinson's disease, including the recently published book for patients and family, "The Parkinson's Disease Treatment Book: Partnering with Your Doctor to Get the Most from Your Medications" (Oxford University Press, 2005, 532 pp.). His professional training included a Ph.D. from Princeton University and M.D. from Dartmouth Medical School, plus internship and medical residency at the University of Chicago and neurology residency at the Mayo Clinic. He has been on staff at Mayo since 1981.
Karen Anderson, MD (U.S.) is a psychiatrist at the University of Maryland with appointments in the departments of both psychiatry and neurology. She did her undergraduate and medical training at the University of Chicago, and completed a psychiatry residency training program and a research fellowship in brain imaging at Columbia University. She is currently an assistant professor in the departments of psychiatry and neurology at the Unversity of Maryland, and is the Psychiatrist for the Movement Disorders group in the Department of Neurology. Dr. Anderson conducts research in brain imaging relevant to behavioral changes (cognitive impairment and psychiatric symptoms) in movement disorders patients. She specializes in study of these symptoms in patients with Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. She is currently in the final year of a K23 Mentored Clinical Scientist Training Award which involves the study of obsessive and compulsive symptoms in Huntington's disease using fMRI. She is also piloting a brain imaging study of mood and cognitive changes in early Parkinson's disease. Dr. Anderson is collaborating with Dr. Lisa Shulman, who is PI of the Maryland Parkinson's and Movement Disorders Center "Q & F Study (Quality of Life & Function Study)" at the University of Maryland, to examine the effects of behavioral symptoms on quality of life and functional ability in movement disorders patients.
Patricia Archbold, RN, DNSc, FAAN (U.S.) is the Elnora E. Thomson Distinguished Professor at the Oregon Health & Sciences University and an Adjunct Investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Northwest Region Center for Health Research. Her research focuses on family care for chronically ill persons and frail elders. Dr. Archbold is a co-investigator on the Parkinson's Spouses Project, a longitudinal study designed to elucidate the dynamics of family care over time in this population. Dr. Archbold is the Director of the John A. Hartford Center of Geriatric Nursing Excellence and program director for the T32 in gerontological nursing . She is currently PI for "PREP: Family-based care for frail older persons" (R01 AG17909) a study funded by the National Institute on Aging, the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality, and the National Institute for Nursing Research.
John Argue (US) attended UC Berkeley from 1960-1965, attaining a B.A. in English and later an M.A. in Dramatic Art. During his time at Cal, he won the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellow award, the Eisner Prize, and was Regents Fellow in Dramatic Art. After graduation Mr. Argue began teaching acting and theater history at a number of distinguished academic institutions, including UC Berkeley, San Francisco State University, The American Conservatory Theater, and Dell Arte School of Mime & Comedy, among others.
In 1969, he created the Openhand Studio where for sixteen years he taught acting, voice, and improvisation, and wrote, produced, and directed a number of theatrical productions (he won a Drama Critics Award for his play Anagnorisis.) In his unique approach to training actors he integrated techniques from the Human Potential Movement, Yoga, Tai Chi Chuan, and Zen meditation. From 1965-1999, Mr. Argue also worked as a professional actor performing in many Bay Area theaters, television commercials, and films. He is a member of Actors' Equity, Screen Actors Guild, and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
In the 1980's, Mr. Argue began working in the field of Drama Therapy, teaching acting in therapeutic settings and working with hospitalized adults and children with disabilities. Recently he has focused on teaching movement and voice classes for people with Parkinson's Disease, developing training regimes that delay and reverse the symptoms of the disease. In 2000, his book entitled Parkinson's Disease & the Art of Moving, which trains physical therapists to teach movement to those afflicted with this debilitating disease, was published by New Harbinger Publications. In August 2003, Mr. Argue released a Video Companion to his book. He has recently been invited to several cities throughout the US to train teachers in his methods and to encourage the formation of Parkinson's exercise programs. Mr. Argue presently resides in Oakland, California where he enjoys cooking, gardening, computers, and writing.
Mary G Baker, MBE, (UK) is President of the European Federation of Neurological Associations, the European Parkinson's Disease Association, Vice President of the European Brain Council, Consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO) and Chair of the Working Group on Parkinson's Disease, formed by the WHO in May 1997. She is Director at Large for the World Stroke Association, patient editor of the British Medical Journal, member of the ABPI Code of Practice and has received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Surrey in recognition of her work within the world of Parkinson's disease. Mary has been invited as a World Parkinson Congress committee member to bring a European flavor to this important global initiative and to ensure that the patients and their families' needs are central to the congress program.
Krys Bankiewicz, M.D. (U.S.) is engaged in research that focuses on restorative interventions, specifically drug delivery and gene transfer, in models of Parkinson's disease and brain tumors. His laboratory studies delivery of therapeutic agents into the central nervous system through automated cell-implantation, convection-enhanced and gene transfer-based delivery methods, as well as in vivo applications of MRI and PET to detect in-vivo changes in brain and their correlation with functional outcome. Most recently his laboratory was involved in the launching of gene therapy trial for PD using AAV vector encoding AADC gene. Use of neuroregeneration approach with viral vector delivery of GDNF gene is now under investigation.
Roger A Barker, M.D. (UK) has been the University lecturer and honorary consultant in neurology at the University of Cambridge since 2000, prior to which he held an MRC Clinician Scientist Fellowship at the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair (CBRC). His research interests are Parkinson's and Huntington's disease and he runs research clinics in both these disorders at the CBRC, with particular emphasis on defining the natural history and heterogeneity of these disorders. This work also involves the development of better biomarkers of disease, as well as better characterising the extent and origin of the non-motor features of these conditions. His laboratory based research has concentrated on developing cell therapies for these disorders, including work on primary ransplants, xenogeneic tissue grafts and stem cells. This work has concentrated in recent years on the problems of xenografted cells in terms of cell migration and axon growth and the endogenosur precursor cell in the neurodegenerating brain. Dr Roger Barker has published over 100 papers, written 5 books and edits the journal Advances in Clinical Neuroscience and Rehabilitation. He is a member of the editorial board of a number of journals and is a member of the UK Parkinson's disease Society Research Advisory panel and MRC Stem cell clinical liason committee.
M. Flint Beal, MD (U.S.) is the Anne Parrish Titzell Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University and Director of the Neurology service at the New York Presbyterian Cornell Campus. Dr. Beal received his medical degree from the University of Virginia in 1976 and did his internship and first year residency in Medicine at New York-Cornell before completing his residency in Neurology at The Massachusetts General Hospital. He joined the neurology faculty at Harvard in 1983. Dr. Beal was Professor of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Neurochemistry laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital before moving to Cornell. Dr. Beal's research has focused on the mechanism of neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Dr. Beal is the author or co-author of more than 350 scientific articles and more than 125 books, book chapters and reviews. He is a co-editor of the "Dana Guide to Brain Health" and "Neurodegenerative Diseases, Neurobiology, Pathology and Therapeutics". Dr. Beal is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mara Behlau PhD (Brazil) was born in São Paulo City - Brazil and is a speech-language-pathologist, voice specialist. She completed her undergraduate program at "Universidade Federal de São Paulo - Escola Paulista de Medicina, UNIFESP-EPM", in 1977. In 1978 she accomplished a specialization course on Human Communication Disorders at the same university. In 1979 she received her first training abroad at the "Policlinico di Milano", in Milan, under the direction of Prof. Ettore Bocca, and at the "Centro Medico Phoniatrico", in Padua, Italy, under the direction of Prof. Lucio Croatto. In 1984 she got her master degree and in 1986 her PhD both on a convenium between "Universidade Federal de São Paulo - Escola Paulista de Medicina, UNIFESP-EPM" and "Michigan State University- MSU", East Lansing, under the advisory of Prof. Paulo Pontes (Brazil) and Prof. Oscar Tosi (USA). In 1988-9 she was a post-doctoral fellow at the "University of California San Francisco - UCSF", under the supervision of Prof. Herbert Dedo.
She authored several books on voice (voice assessment, disorders and acoustic of Brazilian Portuguese), including the textbook for undergraduate program BEHLAU, M. & PONTES, P. - Avaliação e tratamento das disfonias. São Paulo, Lovise, 1995, 312pp and the textbook for the graduate program BEHLAU, M. (org.) - Voz. O livro do especialista. Rio de Janeiro, Revinter. Vol. I and II, 2005, 924pp.
She has received 15 scientific acknowledgments for best projects and researches and three important awards, including an achievement award from the "Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation", in 1997, a great honor of the "Sociedade Brasileira de Laringologia e Voz - SBLV", in 1999, and a great honor of the "Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia - SBFa, in 2004.
She was one of the scientific founders of the "Associação Brasil-Parkinson - ABP", in 1985 being the coordinator of the Speech-Language Pathology Service at the institution. She is the director of the "Centro de Estudos da Voz - CEV", offering a 2-year graduate program for SLP in voice specialization. She belongs to several international societies and editorial boards, being on the scientific board of The Voice Foundation - TVF, The Pacific Voice and Speech Foundation - PVSF and The International Association for Logopedics and Phoniatrics - IALP, where she is currently the president-elected.
Alim Louis Benabid, PhD was born in 1942, he received his MD in 1970 and his PhD in Physics in 1978 at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble (UJFG), and completed his basic neurosciences training during a sabbatical at the Salk Institute from 1979 to 1980. He was appointed Staff Neurosurgeon in 1972, and Professor of Experimental Medicine at UJFG in 1978. He is Professor of Biophysics. since 1983, Director of the Laboratory of Preclinical Neurosciences at INSERM since 1988, Head of Neurosurgery at the Joseph Fourier University Hospital since 1989 and additionally Coordinator of the Center for Functional Neurosurgery "Claudio Munari", Milano, since 1999. He has been elected as a Member of the French Academy of Medicine in 1999, of the Royal Academy of Medicine in Belgium and of the Academy of Sciences at the Institut de France in 2002. His research has initially focused on mathematical modelling of intracranial pressure, MRI spectroscopy, molecular biology of brain tumours and basal ganglia physiology, as well as neurosurgical robotics. Since his discovery, in 1987, of the effects of high frequency stimulation on neural elements, he established the Deep Brain Stimulation therapy for movement disorders, which he extended to several targets and to other pathologies such as dystonia, epilepsy, and experimental models for obesity, psychosurgery. He authored or co-authored a large number of papers in peer reviewed journals and book chapters. His current research, from the neurosurgery department to animal models, explores the acute and long term biological effects of high frequency stimulation, from neural firing to gene expression, and to understand its mechanisms of action. For this he has received several international awards.
Ken Bergmann, M.D.(U.S.)is Associate Professor of Neurology and Director of the William Edwards Murray Center for Research on Parkinson's Disease and Related Disorders at the Medical University of South Carolina.
He obtained his BA in Psychology at the Johns Hopkins University and his MD from Stony Brook School of Medicine. After residency in neurology and a fellowship in movement disorders with Melvin Yahr at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, he remained on the faculty in the Clinical Center for Parkinson's Disease at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Prior to joining MUSC, Dr Bergmann also held positions at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and was in private practice in Charlotte, NC.
Dr. Bergmann is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and a member of the Research Committee on Parkinson's Disease of the World Federation of Neurology, where he also serves on the International Advisory Committee which organizes the biannual International Congress on Parkinson's Disease.
Erwan Bezard, PhD (France) is a graduate of the University Victor Segalen - Bordeaux 2 and was a visiting research fellow at University of Manchester (UK). He holds an INSERM researcher position since 2001. Bezard has authored or co-authored over 70 professional publications in the field of neurobiology, most of which are on Parkinson's disease and related disorders. He is perhaps best known for the reappraisal of both the identification of the nature of compensatory mechanisms that mask the progression Parkinson's disease and their sequential activation in non-human primate models that mimic Parkinson's progression.
Bezard's current research interests include the study of the compensatory mechanisms, the levodopa-induced dyskinesia, the basic pathophysiology of basal ganglia circuitry, and the development of new strategies to alleviate symptoms and/or to slow disease progression. Bezard consults for several drug companies in the field of movement disorders and is a non-executive director of Motac Neuroscience and Motac Cognition.
Kevin M. Biglan, M.D., MPH (USA) is an assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York. He is a graduate of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia where he remained to complete a residency in Neurology. After residency, he trained in Movement Disorders and Experimental Therapeutics under Drs. Ira Shoulson and Karl Kieburtz at the University of Rochester where he simultaneously completed an MPH in clinical investigation studying predictors of dopaminergic non-motor complications in early Parkinson’s disease.
Upon completing his fellowship, Dr. Biglan took a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University. While at Hopkins he was the director of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Care Center sponsored by the National Parkinson’s Foundation. He returned to the University of Rochester in 2005 as faculty to pursue experimental therapeutics in movement disorders. Dr. Biglan’s current research interests focus on the relationship of clinical and biomarker outcomes in movement disorders and the development and evaluation of disease modifying therapies in neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Biglan is actively involved in the Parkinson Study Group and Huntington Study Group.
Anders Björklund (Sweden) has been researching reparative and neuroprotective mechanisms in the CNS using cell replacement and gene transfer techniques. In the 1970s his group pioneered studies of neural transplantation to the brain, and developed techniques for cell replacement in animal models of Parkinson's disease. Over the last 15 years the Lund neural transplantation program, headed by Professor Olle Lindvall, has been one of the leading clinical programs for the development of restorative therapies in Parkinson´s disease.
Current research at the Wallenberg Neuroscience Center is focussed on the use of neural stem cells and viral vector-mediated gene transfer for neuroprotection and brain repair, with the aim to develop new therapeutic approaches for Parkinson´s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Judith Blazer, MS (US) is the Executive Director of WE MOVE. She has been with WE MOVE since its inception in 1991 and has functioned as Executive Director since 1994. Ms. Blazer earned her Bachelor's Degree in health education from New York University, and her Master's Degree from Columbia University, School of Dental and Oral Surgery. Ms. Blazer combined a career of healthcare administration with a teaching position at Columbia SDOS for over 15 years. Utilizing her experience in health care delivery, education, marketing, communications, and administration, Ms. Blazer has overseen WE MOVE's evolution from a small, University-based program, to an internationally recognized and highly respected not-for-profit organization. WE MOVE is an accredited provider of continuing medical education (CME) and the only not-for-profit organization that provides medical and scientific information about all movement disorders to patients and their families as well as healthcare professionals. Ms. Blazer, a recognized leader in the movement disorder community, serves on numerous committees and advisory boards of not-for-profit organizations including the American Academy of Neurology/Movement Disorder Society Planning Committee for regional CME courses; American Academy of Neurology, Subcommittee on the Education of the Non-Neurologist; the American Brain Coalition; American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics (ASENT) Advocacy Task Force; Child Neurology Foundation, Subcommittee for Advocacy Relations; Easter Seals, Spasticity National Advisory Board; and American Academy of Cerebral Palsy & Developmental Medicine, Continuing Education Committee.
Martha Churchill Bohn, PhD (US) is a Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Biological Chemistry at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. She is Director of the Neurobiology Program at Children's Memorial Research Center (CMRC). Dr. Bohn served as Interim Director of the CMRC from 2001-2003. Dr. Bohn received her AB degree in Chemistry from Cornell University and her PhD degree in Neuroscience from the University of Connecticut in 1979. She has held faculty positions at Cornell Medical College, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and the University of Rochester Medical Center. Dr. Bohn serves on the editorial boards for Experimental Neurology, and Gene Therapy and Molecular Biology. She has served as President for the American Society for Neural Transplantation and Repair and the Chicago Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. She has also served on many advisory boards for scientific societies, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She is presently a member of the NIH Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee that reviews all gene therapy clinical protocols and advises on policy related to the gene therapy field. Dr. Bohn's research is focused on understanding development of the brain and generating novel therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's and Lou Gehrig's diseases. Her research program is supported by 4 grants from the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bohn has lectured extensively and has published over 100 articles in scientific journals and books. While Interim Director of CMRC, Dr. Bohn founded a novel program called CRIB (Childrens Research on Injury to the Brain) to promote the translation and application of neuroscience research to diseases and injuries of children. She is also involved in several translational research projects aimed at getting novel gene therapies to the clinic for Parkinson's disease. Dr. Bohn has recently established a viral vector translational resource center to facilitate the translation of basic science to the clinic in the field of gene therapies for neurodegenerative diseases and injuries to the nervous system.
Alba Bonetti, RN (Italy) is Nurse coordinator of Centro per la Malattia di Parkinson e Disturbi del Movimento at the Istituti Clinici di Perfezionamento, in Milan. She has a Masters Degree in Health Care Services Management. She is a founding member of Associazione Italiana Parkinsoniani (AIP). She has been involved in care delivery and quality of life of people affected by Parkinson's disease and their families since 1990 by promoting multidisciplinary care plans. She has a 14 years experience on clinical trials in Parkinson's disease. She is involved in teaching and she has served in numerous committees of Parkinson Study Group.
Vincenzo Bonifati, MD (Italy) received his M.D. degree in 1988 and the specialization in neurology in 1992 from "La Sapienza" University of Roma, Italy. In 2003 he completed 4-year laboratory training and received his Ph.D. in human genetics from the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. From 1988 he has been collaborating with the Parkinson's disease center of "La Sapienza" University (Roma), participating in research on clinical, epidemiological and genetic aspects of neurodegenerative diseases. From 1993 his research interests have been focused on the study of the etiopathogenesis of Parkinson's disease and the role of genetic factors. In 2000 he moved to the Dept. of Clinical Genetics of Erasmus Medical Center Rotterdam, to perform research in the field of molecular genetics of neurodegeneration. Here, he contributed to the identification of PARK7, a locus for autosomal recessive early onset parkinsonism, and, in 2003, he completed the project of positional cloning of DJ-1, the gene defective at the PARK7 locus. He has recently established his-own group within the lab of Prof. Ben Oostra at ErasmusMC Rotterdam, focusing on the study of genetics of PD and related disorders. He has published more than 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals, including several contributions dealing with molecular and clinical aspects of parkinsonism associated with mutations in the parkin (PARK2), PINK1 (PARK6), and very recently, the LRRK2 (PARK8) gene.
Melanie M. Brandabur, MD (USA) is a neurologist specializing in Parkinson’s disease and other Movement Disorders. She completed a clinical fellowship in Movement Disorders under the direction of Dr Harold Klawans and Dr Christopher Goetz and a basic science fellowship in Neurodegenerative diseases under Dr Elliott Mufson, both at Rush University in Chicago. She also studied at the Hospital de la Salpetriere in Paris, France under Dr. Yves Agid.
Dr. Brandabur is currently the medical director of the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF) Center of Excellence Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Center at Alexian Neurosciences Institute in the Chicago area. She is also an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she conducts a PD clinic as part of her outreach effort to underserved communities.
Dr. Brandabur is strong advocate of the team approach to healthcare and is fortunate to have an equally caring and committed staff. Working closely with colleagues in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Rehabilitative Medicine and Neurosurgery, the center offers a multidisciplinary approach to the treatment of PD and parkinsonism.
Dr. Brandabur is also strongly committed to PD education, both at the professional and patient level. She and is a frequent lecturer to physicians, nurses, social workers and other professionals as well as to community groups and people affected by PD.
Dr. Brandabur serves as a PI in clinical trials for PD. Other research interests include speech and gesture disorders in PD, in cooperation with Dr. David McNeill and Dr. Susan Duncan of University of Chicago. This work has been supported in part by the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Brandabur also serves as a medical advisor for Community Partners for Parkinson Care (CPP), an initiative by the National Parkinson Foundation to improve outreach, education, and care for persons with Parkinson’s disease in underserved, minority, and rural communities. In conjunction with Northwestern Medical Center and Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, the NPF center at Alexian serves as part of the Chicago area CPP team, one of six nation-wide sites for this innovative outreach effort.
Richard Bringewatt, (U.S.) is a nationally recognized leader on health systems transformation for people with complex chronic conditions. Currently, Mr. Bringewatt is Co-founder and President of the National Health Policy Group (NHPG) and Co-founder and Chair of the National Alliance for Specialty Healthcare Programs (SHP Alliance), a national leadership group of healthcare plans and programs specializing in care of persons with serious and disabling chronic conditions.
Prior to establishing the National Health Policy Group, Mr. Bringewatt was co-founder and President and CEO of the National Chronic Care Consortium (NCCC). Mr. Bringewatt evolved the NCCC from a national demonstration to a national leadership association involving many of the premier health plans and integrated health and long-term care delivery systems in the United States. The NCCC was widely known for its real-world, high-quality solutions for improving health policy and practice using systems integration and planned change technologies.
As a seasoned executive and social entrepreneur, Mr. Bringewatt has developed multiple policy and program innovations. He speaks, writes, and consults extensively with a broad spectrum of national and international leaders and groups and has served on numerous boards, committees and expert panels, including expert advisor and panelist for the PBS television special, "Who Care: Chronic illness in America." Mr. Bringewatt has a master's degree in administration and social policy from the University of Michigan.
David J Brooks MD DSc FRCP FMed Sci (U.K.) is Hartnett Professor of Neurology and Head of the Department of Sensorimotor Systems in the Division of Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London. He is also Head of the Neurology Group at the Medical Research Council Clinical Sciences Centre, Hammersmith Hospital, London. Additionally, he is Chief Medical Officer of Imanet, GE Healthcare PLC.
He is a member of the Research Advisory Board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease Research, the UK Medical Research Council Neuroscience and Mental Health Board, the Research Advisory Panel of the UK Parkinson's Disease Society (Chairman 1996-7), and UK Huntington's Disease Association. He was Chairman of the Scientific Issues Committee of the Movement Disorder Society 1998-2002 and of the Council of Management of the UK Parkinson's Disease Society 1997-8. He is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Neural Transmission, Synapse, Molecular Imaging and Biology, and Current Trends in Neurology, and was on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 1998-2004 and Movement Disorders 1994-1998. In 2001 he was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Science, UK. In 2002 he was invited to give the Stan Fahn Lecture at the International Congress of Movement Disorders, Miami, in 2003 the George Cotzias Lecture in Madrid, in 2004 the Charles E Wilson Lecture, The Psychobiology Institute. Jerusalem March 2004, and in 2005 the Kuhl-Lassen lecture at the Society of Nuclear Medicine, Toronto.
His research involves the use of positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging to diagnose and study the progression of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease and their validation of biomarkers therapeutic trials. To date, he has published over 250 reports in peer reviewed journals, including Nature, and his research is currently supported by grants from the UK Medical Research Council, the UK Wellcome Trust, Michael J Fox Foundation, UK Parkinson's Disease Society, and industry.
Gila Bronner, MPH MSW (Israel) is a certified sex therapist and is the director of the Sex Therapy Service in the new Sexual Medicine Center of the Sheba Medical Center, Israel (since January 2004). Besides sex therapy, the job includes training of sex therapists and counseling of physicians, nurses, social workers and health educators to cope with sexual aspects in their work. Between 1997 and 2004 she was a sex therapist in the nerologic, psychiatric and cardiologic departments of the Tel-Aviv Medical Center in Israel, contributing to a multidisciplinary approach in the promotion of sexual health and treatment of sexual problems. In the neurologic department she conducted a research on sexual changes due to Parkinson's disease and helped the multidisciplinary staff develop skills to cope with these sexual changes. A member of the board of directors of the Israeli Family Planning Association (FPA) from 1985 to 2000. Today, vice-president and board member of the Israeli association of sex therapists (ITAM). She published books on sexuality and sex education for children, adolescents and elders and articles in the professional literature. Her international activities include training of physicians, nurses and social workers in Lisbon (2004), Croatia (2002), Australia (2002), Athens (2002), Trinidad (2000) and Cyprus (1998). She was the chair-person of the scientific committee of the European congress of sexology 2002, and member of the scientific committee of the World congress of sexology 2005. Her language proficiency includes: English (very good), German (good), French, Spanish & Polish (fair).
Patrik Brundin, M.D., Ph.D. (Sweden) is a Professor of Neuroscience at the Neuronal Survival Unit, Department of Experimental Medical Science, at Lund University. He is also the Head of the Department of Experimental Medical Science. Professor Brundin finished his Ph.D. at Lund University in 1988 and became a M.D. in 1992. During his thesis work 1983-1988 he studied neural transplantation in the brain focusing on developing a neural transplantation therapy for Parkinson's disease which involved transplantation of dopaminergic neurons. In 1987, Professor Brundin was the cell biologist responsible for the tissue used in the first Swedish clinical trials with neural transplantation in humans. So far he has participated in clinical trials with intracerebral grafts in 19 Parkinsonian patients (including one in Singapore). The overall objectives of his research are to refine neural grafting for Parkinson's disease, explore brain plasticity in the context of adult neurogenesis and to improve our understanding of Huntington's disease pathogenesis in order to develop biomarkers and novel therapies. The specific aims are to develop human embryonic stem cells as a source for transplantation in Parkinson's disease; to understand mechanisms underlying graft-induced dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease; to examine neurogenesis in the adult brain as a source of plasticity; and to explore neuropathology, pathogenetic mechanisms and biomarkers in Huntington's disease.
Professor Brundin is chairman, coordinator or organizer for numerous project and organizations. He is coordinator of the Swedish Research Council Strong Research Environment on Brain neurodegeneration, plasticity and repair (NeuroFortis) (2005-today); Coordinator of the Nordic Center of Excellence - Molecular Mechanisms of Neurodegenerative Diseases (2005-today); Steering committee of the EU-sponsored Network of Excellence NeuroNE (European consortium for research into neurodegenerative disorders) (2005-today); Governing Board of EU sponsored integrated project PROMEMORIA. (From cell-cell recognition to memory formation. New strategies for the treatment of dysfunctional plasticity, learning and memory) (2005-today); Chair of the Clinical/basic science links committee at the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) (2004-2005); Steering committee of the Euro-HD Network (2003-today); Chairman of Phase III Medical School Executive Committee, Medical Faculty of Lund University (2002-2004); Coordinator of the EC-sponsored Marie Curie Training Site on "Neurodegeneration, cell rescue and brain repair"(2001-2005); Coordinator of the EC-sponsored Concerted Action on "Early Pathogenetic Markers for Slow Neurodegenerative Diseases"(201-2004); President of NECTAR (Network for European CNS Transplantation and Restoration) (1994-2000). Professor Brundin serves on numerous review committees, editorial boards, and advisory groups. He has authored over 160 original articles as well as more than 60 reviews and book chapters. In 2003 he was identified as one of the 0.5% most cited researchers within neuroscience during the last 20 years, by ISI (Institute for Scientific Information), a position he still holds.
Professor Brundin has received numerous grants and awards. In 2004 he was awarded the The Bernard Sanberg Memorial Award for outstanding research contributions in the field of neural transplantation and repair and in 2003 he was awarded the Medal of Honour from the Swedish Parkinson Association. He is an elected member of Academia Europaea since 2004. Other awards are The Catedra Santiago Grisolía Chair Prize, Valencia, Spain (2001); Presented with The Outstanding Young Persons of the World Award for research and academic leadership by the Swedish Junior Chamber (2001); Awarded Dr. Eric K. Fernström Foundation's Prize to young Swedish scientists (1999).
Professor Brundin is a consultant for several biotech companies. He is frequently represented the Medicon Valley (promoting the biotech industry in the Öresund region) notably with lectures in Japan and USA. He is on a regular basis cited in newspaper articles and has appeared on television and radio on around 10 occasions in relation to scientific news or debate.
Kathleen Coen Buckwalter, PhD, RN, FAAN (U.S.) University of Iowa Foundation Distinguished Professor of Nursing, was named Associate Provost for Health Sciences from 1997-2004. In addition to her primary academic appointment as professor of nursing, she is Co-Director of the University's Center on Aging, Co-Director of the Hartford Center for Geriatric Nursing Excellence, Associate Director of the Gerontological Nursing Interventions Research Center, and has secondary appointments in the College of Medicine Departments of Psychiatry and Internal Medicine. Buckwalter is recognized internationally for her research in psychiatric nursing, aging and long term care, and has a sustained record of private and federal support related to the evaluation of clinical nursing interventions for geropsychiatric populations. Her particular interest is in behavioral management strategies for rural caregivers of persons with dementia and the effectiveness of community programs to prevent, minimize, and treat psychiatric problems in the rural elderly. With support from the NIMH and Administration on Aging, Buckwalter headed the Mental Health of the Rural Elderly Outreach Project. She also served as principal investigator of the PLST Model: Effectiveness for Rural ADRD Caregivers funded by NINR.
In 1999, Dr. Buckwalter received the Distinguished Contribution to Research Award from the Midwest Nursing Research Society and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine. In 2001 she was the recipient of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association Excellence in Research Award, and the first recipient of the National Gerontological Nursing Association Board of Directors Award. Dr. Buckwalter serves on numerous review committees, editorial boards, and advisory groups. She has authored over 225 articles, over 75 book chapters, 8 health policy and commission papers, over 40 monographs/videos/media, over 75 editorials/reviews/commentaries, and co-edited eight books on topics such as geriatric mental health, memory, aging, and dementia.
Robert E Burke, MD (U.S.) is a Professor of Neurology and Pathology and the Director of Laboratory Research in Parkinson's Disease at Columbia University Medical Center. He is currently the Program Director of the Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence at Columbia. He has demonstrated that programmed cell death (apoptosis) occurs in dopamine neurons of the substantia nigra both during normal development and in living animal models of PD. His current work is focused on the regulation of developmental cell death in dopamine neurons by neurotrophic factors such as GDNF, and the molecular basis of programmed cell death in models of parkinsonism. Dr Burke has been invited to participate on the Program Committee to provide expertise on mechanisms of cell death in dopamine neurons.
Donald Calne, MD(Canada) received his Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Science and Doctor of Medicine degrees from Oxford University. He served as a neurologist at the Hammersmith Hospital and Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London and then as Clinical Director and Chief of the Experimental Therapeutics Branch of the National Institute of Neurological Disease at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. In 1981 he was appointed Director of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Centre at the University of British Columbia (Canada). He held this position until 2001.
Susan Calne (Canada) trained at St. Thomas' Hospital London. After moving to the USA in 1974 she obtained her nursing license and was a Clinical Instructor in at Carriage Hill of Bethesda. In 1981 Susan became Clinical Co-ordinator of the UBC Movement Disorders Clinic, the first in Canada, developing a program for patient counselling and education in both Parkinson's and Dystonia. In 1987 she was the first nurse appointed to the board of the Parkinson Society Canada where she was responsible for Patient Services until 1998. During this time she implemented the Clinical Assistance and Outreach nursing programmes. This group subsequently developed, tested and published The Parkinson's Impact Scale in both patients and caregivers. Susan is an assistant editor for Parkinsonism and Related Disorders. She is an educational resource for Parkinson Society BC. In 2001 Susan was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada and was the recipient of the first Mimi Feutl Award from Parkinson Society Canada both for services to patients and their families. She lectures professional and patient groups and has published over 60 papers, book chapters, patient handbooks and pamphlets. She co-produced the video “Living Well with Parkinsons” for newly diagnosed patients with Parkinson Society BC and is currently involved in developing a Canadian ‘Train the Trainer’ program for nurses and caregivers looking after Late Stage Parkinson’s disease.
Jonathan Carr, PhD (South Africa) trained at the University of Cape Town, and did his Neurology Residency at Mt Sinai Medical Center in New York. After a year of research concerning the genetics of primary generalized epilepsies, he joined the Neurology Unit at the University of Stellenbosch, which he currently heads. After a sabbatical at the University of British Columbia during which he worked on the etiology of Parkinson's disease, he has been studying Parkinson's disease in Southern Africa. He has recently completed his PhD on a novel form of progressive myoclonic epilepsy.
Julie Carter, RN (U.S.) is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Associate Director at the OHSU Parkinson Center of Oregon. She holds a joint appointment at the School of Nursing and the School of Medicine. In addition to her own research and clinical care, she directs the clinical research program and educational program at the center. Ms. Carter received her BSN in 1973 and her M.S. in 1976 from Oregon Health and Science University. She joined the Movement Disorders Program at OHSU in 1979.
Ms. Carter is dedicated to improving the lives of people with Parkinson's disease and their families. She approaches Parkinson's disease as a family disease and provides care accordingly to both the patient and their family. She has taken a special interest in setting up innovative programs to help patients and families with Parkinson's disease and has been involved in multiple clinical trials over the last 20 years. Her current focus is on neuroprotective therapies and she heads up the neuroprotective site at the Parkinson Center of Oregon.
Ms. Carter has authored and co-authored 44 journal articles, 13 book chapters and 37 abstracts. She also co-authored A Handbook for People with Parkinson's Disease, which is an invaluable resource to those living with Parkinson's disease.
Harvey Checkoway, PhD (US) is a Professor of Environmental Health and Epidemiology at the University of Washington. His main areas of research and teaching are occupational and environmental risk factors for chronic diseases. Recent examples of research projects for which he has been or is principal investigator are studies of: silica, silicosis, and lung cancer among diatomaceous earth industry workers; semen quality among lead smelter workers; environmental and genetic risk factors for Parkinson's disease; parkinsonism in relation to pesticide exposures among orchardists; and cancer risks among textile workers in Shanghai. Dr. Checkoway teaches a course in Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology (ENVH/EPI 570). He is Director of the UW Superfund Basic Research Program Project (since 1998) and the Training Grant in Environmental and Molecular Epidemiology (since 1990), both funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Dr. Checkoway is first author of a textbook on occupational epidemiology, "Research Methods in Occupational Epidemiology", New York: Oxford University Press (1st edition1989, 2nd edition 2004), and has published over 140 papers in the peer-reviewed scientific literature.
Phillip G. Clark, ScD (U.S.) is Professor and Director of the Program in Gerontology and the Rhode Island Geriatric Education Center at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston, Rhode Island, USA. He received his Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard University in 1979, and he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ethics and Public Policy at Wesleyan University during 1980-81. He has been on the faculty at the University of Rhode Island since 1981; during 1988-89 he was Visiting Professor at the Universities of Guelph and Toronto in Canada. His research and program development interests include interdisciplinary teamwork and health professions education, comparative geriatric health care policy, health promotion with older adults, ethical issues in aging, narrative gerontology and clinical practice, and aging and developmental disabilities.
His scholarly work has been published in the Canadian Journal on Aging, The Gerontologist, Journal of Aging and Health, Ageing and Society, Educational Gerontology, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, and the Journal of Interprofessional Care. He has served as Principal Investigator on funded research and program development grants from the National Institute on Aging, U.S. Administration on Aging, U.S. Bureau of Health Professions, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. He is currently a Co-Investigator of an international research study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Dr. Clark is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education. He is also a member of both the Advisory Board of the Institute of Aging and the Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues (ELSI) Advisory Committee for Canadian Lifelong Health Initiative (CLHI), Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Government of Canada.
Perry Cohen, PhD (US) is an active participant and leader on the national level in advocacy activities for Parkinson's issues. He is Project Director for the Parkinson Pipeline Project, which he initiated along with a program on Quality Access and Delivery of Parkinson's Care for the Parkinson's Disease Foundation. Perry's other major advocacy efforts have included, lobbying Congress and helping coordinate the activities of PD organizations working for passage of the Udall Bill; arranging a summit meeting with the NIH Director, White House Staff, and NINDS to establish collaboration with NIH; testifying before the US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, testifying before a Medicare advisory committee on national coverage determination for DBS; and serving as a Delegate to the "Parkinson's Research Agenda" planning meeting. Perry also is a Patient Representative on the FDA's Deep Brain Stimulation Advisory Panel, and a liaison for PD to the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) and the Agency For Healthcare Research And Quality (AHRQ). Prior to being diagnosed with PD in May 1996, Perry worked as a planning and evaluation consultant in the health industry, working with NIH, employee health benefits, health insurance plans, medical groups, and academic research centers. Perry's community volunteer activities include serving on the boards of a large staff model HMO, a biomedical research unit of a multi-institutional health system, and a local healthcare foundation. He has authored and co-authored articles in peer review journals in the fields of health services management, public health, team development, and most recently in psychiatry and neurology on the co-morbidities and costs of PD. He has an MS and a Ph.D. in Organizational Development from MIT, Sloan School of Management; and a BS in Management Science and Math from Carnegie-Mellon University. Diagnosed 1996, Perry has participated as a research subject in numerous clinical and behavioral studies at NIH, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Maryland.
Ronald Allan Cole, PhD (U.S.) is the current Director and Founder of the Center for Spoken Language Research at the University of Colorado, and is a professor in Computer Science. During the past eight years, Dr. Cole has worked to stimulate and sustain international collaboration in computer science and engineering. In 1997, with Jose Fortes, Dr. Cole organized the NSF-sponsored Workshop on International Collaboration in Computer Science; the resulting report is at http://cslr.colorado.edu/mirror/nsf/wiccs97/report.html. Subsequently, he organized several NSF sponsored workshops, with Jose Fortes, Jaime Carbonnell and others, in the U.S., Argentina, Chile and Mexico, to promote international collaboration in computer science. Several of these workshops led to new projects, initiatives and programs. He also managed a two year project sponsored by the NSF and EU to survey the state of the art of the field of human language technology, which resulted in an edited volume with contributions from over 90 authors (http://cslu.cse.ogi.edu/HLTsurvey/).
Dr. Cole has received grants from NSF CISE international programs to conduct research collaborations in human language technology with colleagues in Brazil and Mexico and a grant from NSF INT to conduct research with colleagues in Chile. I am especially proud of an ongoing and highly productive ongoing collaboration with the Tlatoa speech group at the Universidad de las Americas in Cholula Mexico. Funding from this project was initiated from an NSF-CONACyT program, and has continued under an NSF ITR grant. Work under these projects helped establish the largest and most productive speech research lab in Latin America, which has produced state of the art Spanish speech recognition and text-to-speech synthesis technologies, and the deployment of a computer-based Spanish literacy program using these technologies that is now being tested in Mexican elementary schools.
During the summer of 2004, a grant from the NSF supported a one month workshop at CSLR attended by researchers from Italy, Chile, Mexico and France. These researchers worked together using research tools and technologies developed at CSLR to develop speech recognition and character animation technologies to enable conversational interaction with a lifelike computer character in Italian, French and Spanish. At the end of the month, each research team had developed an Interactive Book that teaches reading and comprehension to students in these languages through interaction with the virtual tutor. Information about the workshop can be found at http://cslr.colorado.edu/beginweb/2003summer_wkshp/.
Dr. Cole's current research is focused on development of virtual humans - lifelike computer characters that interact with people like expert teachers or therapists. Virtual humans invented at the CSLR are now being used to teach children to read and learn from text and to conduct speech therapy with individuals with Parkinson disease or aphasia. The Colorado Literacy Tutor project, (http://cslr.colorado.edu/beginweb/reading/reading.html) uses a virtual reading tutor that teachers young children to learn to read and learn from text. Our virtual speech therapy projects use a virtual speech therapist to treat individuals with Parkinson Disease and individuals with aphasia. (http://cslr.colorado.edu/beginweb/animated_speech_therapist/anim_therapist.html). The invention of virtual humans is an exciting new field of research. I recently organized an NSF sponsored workshop that brought together researchers from several disciplines in hopes of establishing a community that will plan research and development of virtual humans (http://cslr.colorado.edu/beginweb/2004animated_wkshp/).
Carlo Colosimo, MD (Italy) graduated from the Medical School of the Catholic University in Rome, Italy, on July 1985. Topic of the MD Thesis (with Honours): The use of bromocriptine in Parkinson's disease. After undertaking residency in neurology, he has been a post-doctoral research fellow in the same University Department. Since April 1993 he has been Ass. Professor of Neurology at the Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Rome La Sapienza, where he has been responsible for the management of patients admitted under his care to the general neurology ward: in addition, he has been in charge of the Semi-intensive Care Unit for stroke patients. During the past decade he has been involved in trials concerning both antiparkinsonian drugs (new dopamine agonists) and experimental therapeutic agents for acute ischemic stroke (thrombolitics and neuroprotective drugs). He has also contributed to the undergraduate (medical and physiotherapy students) and graduate (residents in neurology) teaching programme of the department.
Clinical research activity has been mainly focused on Parkinson's disease and movement disorders, with particular interest in: (a) use of subcutaneous infusions with dopaminergic agonists (apomorphine, lisuride) for the management of severe motor fluctuations in Parkinson's disease; (b) use of different serotypes of botulinum toxin for the management of focal dystonia (blepharospasm, torticollis, spasmodic dysphonia and writer's cramp) and hemifacial spasm; (c) genetic, epidemiological and clinical aspects of atypical parkinsonian syndromes (multiple system atrophy, Steele-Richardson-Olszewski syndrome, corticobasal degeneration, PD-dementia). He is author of 180 original scientific papers, 68 of which in peer-reviewed international journals, and editor of a successful textbook on movement disorders in Italian (2 editions). He also serves as a manuscript and book reviewer for several international journals and he is member of the editorial board of the journal Movement Disorders since 2004.
Amy L. Comstock, Esq., (U.S.) began as Executive Director of the Parkinson Action Network (PAN) on December 8, 2003. Prior to joining PAN, she served as the sixth Director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, having accepted the nomination to the Senate-confirmed position in 1999. Prior to her appointment to the Office of Government Ethics, Ms. Comstock was Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel's Office. Ms. Comstock began her federal service as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Education in 1988; she ended her tenure there in 1998 as Assistant General Counsel for Ethics. Ms. Comstock began her professional career at the law firm of Beveridge & Diamond. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bard College and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan.
Mark Cookson, PhD (US) received both his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Salford, UK in 1991 and 1995, respectively. His postdoctoral studies included time spent at the Medical Research Council laboratories and at the University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK. He joined the Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and moved to the National Institute on Aging at NIH Bethesda, MD in 2002. Within the Laboratory of Neurogenetics, Dr. Cookson's group works on movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, attempting to understand mechanisms leading to neuronal damage. The group uses cellular and molecular biology techniques to model how the effects of mutations in genes associated with familial forms of PD (alpha-synuclein, parkin, DJ-1, PINK1 and dardarin) affect protein function. Dr Cookson has published over 50 original papers and several review articles. He is currently a member of the editorial board for Neurobiology of Disease and of the scientific advisory board of the Michael J Fox Foundation.
Anna Członkowska, MD, PhD ( Poland) is Professor and Head of the Second Department of Neurology in the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw. She graduated from the Warsaw Medical Academy in 1966 and, following training in neurology at the Warsaw Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology, obtained her MD in 1971 defending the thesis “The study of Hemolysis in Wilson’s Disease”. Prof. Członkowska was awarded a British Council of neuroimmunology grant in 1972. She was a Neurobiology Fellow in the Department of Experimental Neuropathology of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, visiting professor of neuroimmunology in the Department of Neurology, University of Chicago, Illinois, and visiting scientist in the Department of Neuroimmunology, Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry Martinsried, Germany. Prof. Członkowska serves on the boards of various European Neurologic societies and was also President of the Polish Society of Neurology. She is married and has two sons. Her main interests concern stroke, neuroimmunology and Wilson’s disease.
Ted M. Dawson, MD, PhD (US) is the Leonard Madlyn Professor of Neurodegenerative Diseases in the Departments of Neurology and Neuroscience and the Graduate Program in Cellular & Molecular and the Institute for Cell Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is the Director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine's Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence and Director of the Neuroregeneration and Repair Program in the Institute for Cell Engineering. Dr. Dawson is world-renowned for his novel contributions on the role of nitric oxide in neuronal injury. He has published over 300 full-length manuscripts and review articles. He is one of the top five cited Neuroscientists in the last decade (see http://www.sciencewatch.com/jan-feb2001/index.html). He has a strong background in neuroanatomy, pharmacology, molecular biology, protein biochemistry, and the use of in vivo and in vitro model systems to study pathogenic mechanisms. Dr. Dawson has won several awards including the Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award, the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar Award, the Santiago Grisolia Medal (2001). He was honored in 2000 with the ISI Highly Cited Researcher Award. Many advances in neurobiology of disease have stemmed from Dr. Dawson's identification of the mechanisms of neuronal cell death and the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. He pioneered the role of nitric oxide in neuronal injury in stroke and excitotoxicity and elucidated the molecular mechanisms by which nitric oxide and poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase kills neurons. His studies of nitric oxide led to major insights into the neurotransmitter functions of this gaseous messenger molecule. He co-discovered the neurotrophic properties of non-immunosuppressant immunophilin ligands. Dr. Dawson's discoveries have led to innovative approaches and enhanced the development of new agents to treat neurologic disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Due to Dr. Dawson's interest and expertise in PD he was asked to serve on the Program committee.
Valina L. Dawson, PhD (US) is Director of the Nerve Regeneration and Repair Program in the Institute of Cell Engineering, Professor and Vice Chair in Neurology, and Professor in Neuroscience and Physiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She earned her bachelors degree at the University of California at Davis in Environmental Toxicology and her Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Utah Medical School. She trained at the University of Pennsylvania and then at the National Institute for Drug Abuse before joining the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1994.
Her research is focused on exploring cell death and cell survival pathways resulting in 200 publications. She was recently recognized by the ISI as one of the top 100 cited Neuroscientists in the last decade. In studying ischemic (loss of glucose and oxygen) and excitotoxic injury she has identified several novel signaling molecules including nitric oxide mediation of neurotoxicity; activation of PARP by neurotoxic NO production; and mitochondrial release of apoptosis inducing factor, in the integration of the excitotoxic death signal. Her lab is also investigating the gene mutations linked to Parkinson's disease with a focus on Parkin, DJ-1, PINK1 and LRRK2. Using genetically engineered mice, biochemistry, cell biology and animal behavior she is investigating how mutations in these genes lead to dopaminergic neuronal cell loss. She also has undertaken a gene discovery project to understand which proteins are responsible for mediating the profound protection afforded to the brain by the phenomena of ‘preconditioning'. Identification of survival pathways will hopefully open up new therapeutic opportunities. The ultimate goal of the on-going research is to apply the strategies and techniques identified and refined in the basic science laboratory to clinical treatment of neurologic disorders.
Justo García de Yebenes, MD (Spain) was born in Toledo, Spain in 1947. In 1969 he became graduated in Philosophy at the University of Navarra, in 1970, in Medicine at Universidad Complutense of Madrid, and in 1978 became a Doctor in Medicine at Autonomous University in Barcelona. He trained in Neurology at Fundación Jiménez Diaz, Madrid, and at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. He got additional training in Neuropharmacology, with Prof Arvid Carlsson, University of Gothemburg, from 1976 to 1977 and at Columbia University, with Prof. Stanley Fahn, from 1985-1987.
He has served as Assistant Neurologist, at Hospital de S. Pau, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona from 1974 to 1996, as Head of Movement Disorders Unit, Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid, from 1977 to 1989, as Professor and Chairman of Neurology, Fundación Jimenez Díaz, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, from 1989 to 2005 and is now returning to Hospital Ramon y Cajal, Madrid, as the Head of the Neurodegenerative Disorders Unit. He is also continues as the President of the Fundación para Investigaciones Neurológicas and of the Banco de Tejidos para Investigaciones Neurológicas of Madrid.
Prof Yebenes has been Visiting Professor at the University of London, 1994, and at Columbia, 1995-1996, Chair of the Education Committee, Spanish Neurological Society, 1992-1993, Chair of the Neuropharmacology-Neurochemistry Group 1998-1999, President Elect and Chair of the Scientific Affairs Committee 2000-2001, President of the Spanish Neurological Society, 2002-2003. He has been awarded with the nacional prize of Medicine, King Jaime I, in year 2000, and with the medal of health of Castilla-La Mancha in 2003 as well as other scientific prizes. He has written more than 200 papers in peer reviewed journal as well as several articles in general newspapers, and books on medical topics as well as a book of fiction. He is actually member of several government sponsored councils and committees and member of the Board of Directors of the European HD network.
Mahlon R. Delong, MD (US) is the William Timmie Professor of Neurology and Director of the newly created Emory Neuroscience Center; Dr. DeLong was Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Emory University School of Medicine from 1990-2003. He now directs the Emory Comprehensive Neuroscience Center. Dr. DeLong has played a major role in clarifying the functional organization of the basal ganglia and the role of these structures in the pathophysiology of movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease. He and his colleagues proposed the now widely accepted concept of functionally segregated basal ganglia-thalamocortical circuits, which has helped to clarify the diverse role of the basal ganglia in motor, cognitive and emotional functions. He carried out important studies in primate models of Parkinson's and other movement disorders that have provided fundamental insight into the underlying mechanisms of these disorders and led to the discovery of new surgical targets. His studies helped to renew interest in new surgical approaches to treatment of movement disorders. Dr. DeLong and his colleagues have carried out major clinical trials of pallidotomy and deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease.
Among numerous awards, Dr. DeLong received a Javitz Neuroscience Investigator Award from the NINDS for his research, and the Alfred E. Springer Award by the APDA and was elected to membership in the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. DeLong is Chair of the Society for Neuroscience, Government and Public Affairs Committee. He served on the Advisory Council of the NINDS from 1996-2000. He serves on the Editorial Board of several scientific journals and government and private foundation advisory panels. He is also the Scientific Director of the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the APDA. Health America has recognized Dr. DeLong as one of the Top Doctors in neurology for the treatment of movement disorders.
Ariel Y. Deutch, MD (US) is Professor of Psychiatry and Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His broad interests focus on the involvement of central dopamine systems in neuropsychiatric conditions. His major current research efforts revolve around a center that he directs that examines the mechanisms of dendritic plasticity in striatal neurons in Parkinson's disease. Other areas of investigation include novel neuroproteomics (mass spectrometric imaging) studies of the subthalamic nucleus in Parkinson's disease, interactions of dopamine and orexin in the regulation of frontal cortical function, and environmental modification of disease progression in Parkinson's disease. Dr. Deutch is a member of the Scientific Council of NARSAD. In addition to his research activities, Dr. Deutch is involved in teaching and training at both the graduate student and resident level. Because Dr. Deutch is the chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the National Parkinson Foundation, he was asked to serve on the Steering Committee.
Alessando DiRocco, MD (US) graduated from the University of Genova, Italy, and then completed his residency in Neurology and a fellowship in Movement Disorders and geriatric neurology with Dr. Melvin D. Yahr and Dr. Warren Olanow at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He is currently Associate Professor of Neurology at Albert Einstein College. Dr. Di Rocco's clinical activity in Parkinson's disease emphasizes the team approach and he has been active in promoting the care of Parkinson's disease in minority and underserved populations and has pioneered programs for family caregivers attending patients with Parkinson's disease. He is involved in a number of clinical research projects, and his research interest is in the role of trans-methylation in Parkinson's disease and other neurological disorders. He is currently the Principal Investigator of an NIH-funded study on depression and Parkinson's disease that includes a comparative trial with two antidepressants and an investigational part on the role of homocysteine and other metabolites of the methylation pathway in depression and cognitive abnormalities associated with Parkinson's disease. He is a member of several public and private panels and commissions, and has been recently appointed by the World Federation of Neurology Research Committee on Parkinsonism and Related Disorders to lead an effort to study Parkinson's disease in developing countries.
Richard Dodel, MD (Germany) he is a consultant neurologist and private lecturer at the Department of Neurology, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn, Germany. He is an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's disease. His scientific interests focus on basic research (mechanisms of neurodegeneration and plaque deposition). One major interest is concerned with the development of experimental treatment strategies for neurodegenerative disorders. Along with clinical clinical studies he is also concerned with the evaluation of healthcare utilization and health-related quality of life in neurologic disorders.
Theresa J. K. Drinka, Ph.D., MSSW, LCSW (US) earned bachelors and masters degrees in Social Work and a Ph.D. in Continuing Education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Drinka spent 20 years at the University of Wisconsin and the Department of Veterans Affairs developing and administering interdisciplinary clinical programs, teaching interdisciplinary teamwork, and performing clinical research. In 1982 she became Director of Interdisciplinary Team Training and in 1990 she became associate director for Education and Evaluation in the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. In 1996 Dr. Drinka established a consulting and training business through which she conducts human systems analysis and team development. Dr. Drinka has been instrumental in developing numerous clinical assessment, training, and team evaluation methodologies including the ALSAR-R, a tool to evaluate instrumental activities of daily living and the Team Signatures®, a technology to help consultants evaluate the system dynamics of teams. In 1987 Dr. Drinka was awarded the first national Leadership VA Alumni Association's Annual Exemplary Service Award for excellence in leadership and program development. In 1997 Dr. Drinka received the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education Distinguished Teacher Certificate for contributions to interdisciplinary education and in 2000 she was awarded a lifetime achievement award by the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies, Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Drinka serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Interprofessional Care and in addition to co-authoring the book, Health Care Teamwork, has published articles and book chapters on self-directed work teams, interdisciplinary health care teams, and patient assessment instruments.
Joyce S. Dubensky, Esq. (USA) is the Executive Director of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, a non-sectarian group that addresses unresolved tensions through practical programs that help change behaviors in religiously-diverse workplaces, schools and in areas of armed conflict. As the first Executive Director of the Tanenbaum Center, Ms. Dubensky has led the organization in a period of substantial growth. Since her arrival in April 2002, the organization’s programs, operating budget and staff have more than doubled in size.
Learning how to ask the right questions and how to incorporate religious beliefs into a patient’s treatment plan can make a difference in that person’s health. But most healthcare providers do not know how to do this. The Tanenbaum Center therefore created the Religious Diversity in Healthcare initiative, which trains providers on how to respectfully address the sensitive religious issues that often arise but are unnoticed in healthcare settings. Ms. Dubensky has provided in-depth training for hundreds of healthcare practitioners across the country, most recently at the invitation of Kaiser Permanente, the Center to Promote Health Care Studies, the National Arab-American Medical Association of New York and the American College of Physicians-New York.
Ms. Dubensky holds her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she graduated with honors, and has a Master’s degree in American History (with an emphasis on Minority Studies) from Adelphi University. Currently, she serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center Against Violence in the Family.
David Eidelberg, MD (US) is a graduate of Harvard Medical School. Having done his residency in neurology at the Harvard-Longwood Area training program, Dr. Eidelberg pursued post-doctoral training in magnetic resonance research at the National Hospital, Queen Square, London. He did additional training in positron emission tomography (PET) at Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Since 1988, Dr. Eidelberg has served as Director of the Movement Disorders Center and the Functional Brain Imaging Laboratory at North Shore University Hospital. In 1997, he was promoted to the rank of Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery at New York University (NYU) School of Medicine and in 2000 became the Director of the Center for Neurosciences at the Institute for Medical Research of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish (NS-LIJ) Health System. In 2005, Dr. Eidelberg was named the Feinstein Professor of Neurology at NYU and Vice Chairman of the Department of Medicine at NS-LIJ.
He has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards from the National Institutes of Health and other funding sources. Dr. Eidelberg is internationally recognized for his work in clinical neurosciences and brain imaging, having delivered over 150 invited lectures in North America, Europe, and Asia over the past five years. He is the author or co-author of over 300 scientific publications and serves on the editorial boards of Neurology (1995-2001), Movement Disorders (1999-2003), Journal of Nuclear Medicine (1999-Present), Current Opinion in Neurology (2001-2004), and Clinical Neuroscience Research (2004-Present)
Dr. Eidelberg's current research interests include using neuroimaging techniques to study of disease mechanisms in Parkinson's disease (PD) and related movement disorders. A major contribution of his work has been the development of an integrated approach utilizing in vivo radiotracer measurements, network quantification, and behavioral psychophysics as a means of determining changes in functional brain circuitry during novel therapies for PD.
Mr. Robin Elliott (US) has been executive director of the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Inc. since October 1996. Active in development, communications and not-for-profit management in New York City for more than 30 years, he has served variously as vice president for development and external affairs at Teachers College, Columbia University (1988-95) and (with the same title) at Hunter College, The City University of New York (1982-88); as deputy to the Chancellor for University Relations at the City University of New York (1979-82); and as director of information and education at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (1971-79).
Mr. Elliott grew up in southern England and received his formal education at Bradfield (a preparatory school; 1954-59); Magdalen College, Oxford University (B.A. in philosophy, politics and economics, 1962); and Columbia University (M.A. in American Government and Politics, 1965). He is active in reproductive health and rights (as member of the board of directors of Washington-based Advocates for Youth, an organization he co-founded in 1980) and serves also on the boards of directors of the St. Cecilia Chorus (an oratorio group, to which he contributes a lusty bass-baritone), and Community Health Charities (on both national and New York State levels).
Murat Emre, PhD (Turkey) studied medicine at the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine he was trained in neuroscience and clinical neurology at the University of Zürich. He then worked in the fields of neurorehabilitation and clinical research in Switzerland for several years. He trained in movement disorders with Prof. David Marsden at the Queen Square National Hospital for Nervous Diseases, London and in behavioral neurology with Prof. Marsel Mesulam at the Beth Israel Hospital and Harvard Medical School. In 1996 he was assigned as Professor of Neurology at the Istanbul Faculty of Medicine where he started the Behavioral Neurology and Movement Disorders Unit, which he has been chairing since then. His research interests are in Parkinson's disease and related disorders, in particular cognitive aspects of the disease, Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
Stewart Factor, DO (US) is currently Professor of Neurology and Director of the Movement Disorders program at Emory University School of Medicine. He is currently a member of the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association, Movement Disorder Society, Parkinson Study Group, Huntington Study Group, and the Dystonia Study Group. Dr. Factor earned his undergraduate degree in Biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his DO in Medicine at New York College of Osteopathic Medicine at Old Westbury.
Sheree Loftus Fader, MA (US) is an advanced practice nurse, certified in gerontology by the American Nurses Association and in physical rehabilitation by the Association of Rehabilitation Nurses. She earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology and Nursing at Worcester State College and a Master of Science in Nursing at Anna Maria College in Paxton, MA. She completed the Consortium in Gerontology Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and continued her education at Cornell Medical College in New York City, obtaining certification as a gerontological nurse practitioner. Ms. Loftus is recognized as a Parkinson disease educator, author and researcher. She has worked for the Parkinson Disease Foundation, the American Parkinson Disease Association and the National Parkinson Foundation. She served as an investigator in the DATATOP and Pallidotomy studies. Ms. Loftus also developed the consortium for complementary and alternative medicine for Parkinson's (CCAMP). She has lectured extensively nationally and internationally, and has published articles on complementary care for Parkinson's, and a wide variety of Parkinson care related topics.
Ms. Loftus is currently coordinator for community outreach and Parkinson support groups in New York City.
Stanley Fahn, MD (US) (Chair, Steering Committee) is the H. Houston Merritt Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for Parkinson's Disease and Other Movement Disorders at Columbia University Medical Center. He currently is the immediate Past-President of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). He founded the Movement Disorder Society and served as the Chairman of its Steering Committee. After its constitution was approved, he was elected its first president. The Movement Disorder Society, an international organization of professionals active in this subspecialty; has honored him by naming one of the two principal lectureships at its annual International Congresses after him. He was the founding co editor of the journal Movement Disorders, and served in this capacity for the first 10 years of the journal's existence, until 1996. He has also served as Associate Editor of Neurology for 10 years. Dr. Fahn has twice served as Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs for the Food and Drug Administration. He currently serves on an NIH Oversight Committee to review and give advice on clinical trials on neuroprotection for PD. Dr. Fahn and his scientific colleagues at Columbia University were awarded a Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence by the National Institutes of Health in 1999, and it is currently ongoing.
Dr. Fahn organized and executed the development of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and modified and popularized the use of the Schwab England ADL score for global severity of this disease. Both of these rating scores are used world wide, the former to determine the severity of PD, and the latter as a measure of quality of life. He has participated in many clinical trials of a variety of pharmacotherapeutic agents for PD. Along with Dr. Ira Shoulson, Dr. Fahn was a co founder of the Parkinson Study Group (PSG), a consortium of clinical investigators dedicated to conduct controlled clinical trials on the prevention and treatment of Parkinson's disease.
Dr. Fahn has received numerous honors and delivered many titled lectures at a variety of universities around the world. The American Academy of Neurology honored him with the Wartenberg Award for outstanding clinical research in 1986, the First Movement Disorder Prize for outstanding contributions in this field in 1997, and their A. B. Baker Award for outstanding educator in neurology in 1996. The American Neurological Association awarded him the First Soriano Lectureship for excellence in research; the American Parkinson Disease Association, their Fred Springer Prize; and the Blepharospasm Association enrolled him in their Hall Of Fame. NIH selected Dr. Fahn to deliver the 2000 Neurodegeneration Lecture. He received the Srinivasan Award in Chennai, India, in February 2002. In October 2002 he was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies. In November 2002, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Movement Disorder Society. In October 2003, he was elected an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Fahn has been elected an Honorary Member of several foreign neurological societies: Associacion Colombiana de Neurologia, 1986; Sociedad Español de Neurologia, 1987; "Membre d'honneur à titre étranger" (Foreign Honorary Member) of the Société Française de Neurologie (French Neurological Society), 2002.
Sierra Farris, MPAS, PA-C (US) is a certified Physician Assistant specialized in Movement Disorders. She completed her medical training at State University of New York at Stony Brook earning her second Bachelor of Science degree. She obtained a Master's in Clinical Neurology from the University of Nebraska and completed a six-month Movement Disorders internship with Dr. Monique Giroux. Sierra has specialized in the clinical care, deep brain stimulation programming and rehabilitation for Parkinson's disease since 2000. Sierra has developed several educational tools for Parkinson's disease including internet distance learning programs and conducted seminars for the community and health care professionals working in in-patient, out-patient and long term care settings. In addition, she served on the board of directors for the Washington chapter of the American Parkinson's Disease Association. Sierra recently founded the Neuroscience Alliance for Physician Assistants that was granted acceptance as a special interest group for her national association.
Sierra has a wide scope of medical training and experience in other highly specialized areas including cancer, psychiatry and emergency medicine. Prior to PA training, Sierra earned her first Bachelor of Science degree in Clinical Laboratory Science and practiced as a Clinical Laboratory Scientist and instructor at the University of Louisville. She has also completed certification for Health Fitness Instructor from the American College of Sports Medicine with six years experience as a Wellness Director.
Mel B. Feany, M.D., PhD (US) Assistant Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, studies Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Dr. Feany received her undergraduate degree at Harvard College. She completed Ph.D. training in neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, and medical training at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. After residency training in pathology and fellowship training in neuropathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, she joined the faculty and currently directs a laboratory in the Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Feany's laboratory models human neurodegenerative diseases in Drosophila. Her laboratory has described fly models of Parkinson's disease and tau-related disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. The Feany laboratory is currently using Drosophila genetics to identify new genes and proteins involved in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease and the tauopathies.
Howard J. Federoff, MD, PhD (US) received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Following clinical training in Internal Medicine and Endocrinology and a post-doctoral fellowship in molecular neurobiology at Harvard Medical School's Massachusetts General Hospital he joined the faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1995, Dr. Federoff founded the Division of Molecular Medicine and Gene Therapy in the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. In 1997, he was appointed Director of the University's Neuroscience Program. In 2002, he was appointed Senior Associate Dean for Basic Research. Dr. Federoff has helped to create the field of CNS gene therapy and his own group places particular emphasis on treatments for neurodegenerative diseases. He formed and leads the national consortium "The Parkinson's Disease Gene Therapy Study Group" whose mission is to establish a rigorous basis for moving novel gene therapeutics from preclinical studies to clinical trials. He serves on four editorial boards, has chaired NIH Study Section BDCN 3 and is a member of the Board of Scientific Counselors of NIDCR.
Lynn Friss Feinberg, MSW (US) ) is Deputy Director of the National Center on Caregiving at the San Francisco-based Family Caregiver Alliance. The Center works to advance the development of high-quality, cost-effective policies and programs for caregivers in every state in the country. Currently, she directs the National Consensus Project for Caregiver Assessment, funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Archstone Foundation and the California Endowment.
Between 2002 – 2004, she was the project director for the first 50-state survey of family caregiving programs in the U.S., funded by the U.S. Administration on Aging. In recent years, her research has also focused on choice and decision-making for persons with cognitive impairment and their family caregivers. She now serves as co-investigator for a longitudinal study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, to develop interventions for caregiver mental health.
Prior to 2001, Ms. Feinberg was FCA's Director of Research and Information Programs where she managed the agency's research, policy development, information clearinghouse and technical assistance programs. She also directed the "Statewide Resources Consultant” contract with the California Department of Mental Health to coordinate the cross-site replication of FCA's model family support program through a statewide system of 11 non-profit Caregiver Resource Centers in California. Previous positions included serving as area agency on aging planner and evaluator, and conducting aging policy research at the University of California, San Francisco.
She is the author or co-author of over 40 publications and has served on numerous national advisory committees and expert panels to address caregiving and long-term care issues. Ms. Feinberg has lectured widely on family caregiving, long-term care systems development, and the interface of research and practice. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Society on Aging (ASA), and a member of ASA's Generations Editorial Board. Ms. Feinberg holds a master's degree in social welfare and gerontology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Stephen Ferrando, MD (US) is Professor and Director of the Division of Psychosomatic Medicine in the Department of Psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He attended Northwestern University Medical School, did his psychiatry residency training at the University of California, San Francisco and subsequently did an NIMH-funded HIV/AIDS research training fellowship at Cornell. He has focused his research on the neuropsychiatric and quality of life aspects of chronic illnesses as Parkinson's Disease and HIV/AIDS. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, is a peer-reviewer for multiple journals that span medical specialties, and is active in local and national organizations involved with psychosomatic medicine and neuropsychiatry.
H. Christian Fibiger, PhD (US) is Vice President and Global Head of Neuroscience at Amgen. He is responsible for Amgen's worldwide Neuroscience discovery efforts ranging from early exploratory research through clinical candidate selection. He is also responsible for evaluating and implementing collaborate efforts, external alliances and licensing agreements in Neuroscience with biotechnology companies and academic institutions.
Dr. Fibiger received his B.Sc. in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Victoria in 1966 and his Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology from Princeton University in 1970.
Prior to joining Amgen in 2003, Dr. Fibiger served as Vice President of Neuroscience Discovery Research and Clinical Investigation, and LRL Europe at Eli Lilly and Company. Before moving to Lilly in 1998, Dr. Fibiger served as Professor and Head of the Division of Neurological Sciences at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has made major contributions to neuroscience research and is among the top 100 most cited scientists in neuroscience. He is a Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). He has received numerous honors for his research contributions, including the Clark Institute Prize in Psychiatry, the Heinz Lehmann Award of the Canadian College of Neuropsychopharmacology, the Killam Research Prize, the Gold Medal in Health Sciences from the Science Council of British Columbia and the Tanenbaum Distinguished Scientist Award in Schizophrenia Research.
Dr. Fibiger serves on the editorial boards of ten journals in the field of neuroscience and has been coeditor of Neuropsychopharmacology, the official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology. He has authored or coauthored more than 400 scientific papers focused mainly on the neurobiological substrates of Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, depression and drug abuse. Dr. Fibiger has served on numerous national and international scientific advisory boards including the National Institute of Mental Health (USA), the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation (Canada), the Medical Research Council (Canada), the Human Frontiers Science Program (International), and the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (USA).
Leslie Findley, PhD (UK) Since 1981 Professor Findley has been consultant neurologist at the Essex Neurosciences Unit, Old Church Hospital and is currently Chairman of the Neurosciences Board. He is Professor of Health Sciences (Neurology) at London University - South Bank.
He was Chairman of the Parkinson's Disease Society of the United Kingdom from 1995 to 1998 and is currently an Honorary Vice President. He is Chairman of the Board of Trustees, the National Tremor Foundation and Clinical Director of the National ME Centre and a member of the WHO Working Group on Parkinson's disease. His clinical research interests include movement disorders and fatigue syndromes.
Beth Fisher PhD, PT (US) is a Research Assistant Professor in the department of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include the study of brain-behavior relationships with an emphasis on designing intervention to promote neuroplasticity and behavioral recovery in individuals with central nervous system pathology including stroke and Parkinson's disease (PD). Currently she is conducting a clinical trial to determine whether task-specific, high-intensity locomotor training using BWSTT modulates disease progression and retards the development of specific motor deficits in individuals with early-stage Parkinson's disease. Disease progression and motor dysfunction are being assessed using an array of traditional outcome measures, such as UPDRS and timed functional tasks, as well as analysis of changes in motor control, using biomechanical analysis and behavioral testing. Analysis of the underlying movement patterns and motor control processes that are associated with changes in broad functional measures allow us to infer whether the exercise intervention is promoting true neuroplasticity (or neuroprotection) or whether the changes result merely from peripheral adaptations or learned substitutions. In addition, the feasibility of using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to quantify the alterations in cortico-motor circuitry (neuroplasticity) is being assessed. The impetus for this human trial came from her post-doctoral training in which she studied exercise-induced neuroplasticity and recovery in the MPTP-lesioned mouse. The potential benefit of exercise in promoting functional recovery through mechanisms of neuroplasticity in the injured basal ganglia was tested. The results of this work indicated that exercise facilitates behavioral recovery in the injured basal ganglia in part by altering the pattern of expression of the dopamine transporter involved in dopamine neurotransmission.
Tatiana Foroud, PhD (US) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics at Indiana University School of Medicine. Dr. Foroud's primary research interest is in the identification of genes that contribute to the risk for late onset, neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Foroud is the principal investigator of the NINDS funded Parkinson's Research: The Organized Genetics Initiative (PROGENI) study, which seeks to identify the genes underlying familial Parkinson's disease. In addition, she is also the principal investigator of the NIA funded cooperative agreement entitled the National Cell Repository for Alzheimer's Disease, which maintains biological specimens and clinical data from families with Alzheimer's disease and other related familial dementias. Dr. Foroud has published over 100 research papers, including a number in the area of the genetics of Parkinson's disease.
Cynthia Fox, Ph.D., CCC-SLP (USA) received her doctoral degree at the University of Arizona - Tucson, and her master's degree from the University of Colorado-Boulder in communication disorders. Dr. Fox is a Research Associate at the National Center for Voice and Speech (NCVS), a division of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and Executive Vice President of the LSVT(r) Foundation (a non-profit organization). Dr. Fox is considered among the world's experts in administration of LSVT. Her training included a focus in the areas of neuroscience and motor control and in 2002 she received the "Outstanding Teaching by a Teaching Assistant Award" from the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona for her work in the Human Neuroscience course. As part of the LSVT(r) clinical research team, she functions as a clinician, researcher, writer and workshop faculty.
Colonel Karl E. Friedl, PhD (US) Medical Service Corps, holds a Ph.D. in Physiology from the University of California at Santa Barbara. His early research on steroid hormones and responses to military stressors at the Department of Clinical Investigation, Madigan Army Medical Center, in Tacoma, Washington, was followed by research on body composition and nutrition at the United States Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, in Natick, Massachusetts. Beginning in 1993, he served as a staff officer in the Army Systems Hazards Research Program, eventually becoming the Research Area Director (RAD) for the Military Operational Medicine (MOM) Research Program, at the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Maryland. As the RAD, he established a coordinated plan of biomedical research on protection and enhancement of the Soldier, instituted program-level external scientific review of all MOM research, and expanded inter-service cooperation and collaborative projects with other federal agencies including the Department of Veteran's Affairs, National Institutes of Health, National Aeronautics and Space Agency, and the United States Department of Agriculture. As the RAD, COL Friedl was responsible for management of greater than one billion dollars of research funding. COL Friedl assumed command of the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, the lead laboratory for Military Operational Medicine research, in August 2003. He has published over 100 papers including 57 original reports, 18 book chapters, and other reviews and technical reports. COL Friedl received recognition from members of Congress for his work on Gulf War Illnesses research and the Parkinson's disease related research program: the Neurotoxin Exposure Treatment Research Program.
Joseph H. Friedman, MD (US) completed medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and his neurology residency at the New York Neurological Institute. He then joined the faculty of Brown University Medical School where he is clinical professor in the department of clinical neurosciences, and chief of the section on Parkinson's disease and movement disorders. He has been interested in the treatment of drug induced psychosis in Parkinson's disease and was principal investigator for the Parkinson Study Group trial of low dose clozapine, published in the New England Journal. His research interests focus on behavioral aspects of PD including psychosis, sleep disorders and fatigue, but also include drug induced movment disorders.
Hidenao Fukuyama, MD, PhD (Japan) graduated Kyoto University School of Medicine in 1975, and trained internal medicine and neurology as a residence for 4 years. He was enrolled in Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine since 1979 until 1983. His research interest was the dopaminergic innervations on Nucleus Accumbens.
After receiving his Ph.D he worked mainly on the cerebral metabolism of Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease using PET and SPECT in the department of Neurology Kyoto University Hospital as the assistant professor, and later cognitive aspects of these diseases as well as normal subjects using functional MRI in the department of Brain Pathophysiolgy Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine as the associate professor.
In 2001, he was appointed the professor of Functional Brain Imaging in Human Brain Research Center of Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine and has been working as the director of Human Brain Research Center since 2002. His main research field is the functional aspects of Parkinson's disease, especially cognitive functions based on the neuroimaging techniques.
Kjell G. Fuxe, MD (Sweden) was born in Stockholm, Sweden on 25th of April, 1938. He defended his M.D. thesis in 1965 at the Department of Histology, Karolinska Institutet, and became prosektor (associate professor) of histology in 1968 and professor of histology in 1979 in the same department of the Karolinska Institutet. He has written over 1200 neuroscience articles, edited a large number of books in the neuroscience field and is a member of several academics such as the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and the European Academy, and has obtained honorary doctor degrees in Lyon, Barcelona and Ferrara and at the International Albert Einstein's Foundation.He is well known for his mapping of the central monoamine neurons and discovery of novel DA receptor agaonists like bromocriptine and for introducing and providing evidence for the concepts of receptor-receptor interactions and volume transmission together with Prof.Luigi F.Agnati.
Oscar S. Gershanik, MD (Argentina) is presently Professor of Neurology at the University of Buenos Aires, Medical School. He is also Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the French Hospital in Buenos Aires, and Director of the Post-graduate Training Program in Neurology at the University of Buenos Aires. In addition he is Director of the Laboratory of Experimental Parkinsonism at the Institute of Pharmacological Research of the Argentine Research Council of Science and Technology. His clinical and basic research group has been designated a "Center of Excellence” by the National Parkinson Foundation (Miami, Fla., USA)
Prof. Gershanik graduated with honors as an MD in 1972 from the University of Buenos Aires Medical School. He trained in Neurology at the French Hospital in Buenos Aires under Professor A. Thomson. He obtained his Certificate in Adult Neurology from the Argentine Ministry of Health in 1979. From 1978 to 1979 he was a visiting research fellow in the Department of Neurology, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York under Dr. Melvin D. Yahr, and from 1981 to 1982 he returned to the USA this time as Visiting Associate Professor of Neurology in the Department of Neurology, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Rutgers Medical School working under Dr. Roger C. Duvoisin. Upon his return to Argentina he was appointed Section Chief in the Extrapyramidal Diseases Section of the Department of Neurology, French Hospital Buenos Aires, a position he held until becoming Chairman of the Department in 2003.
Prof. Gershanik's research interests have always been related to the field of Parkinson's disease and movement disorders, with special emphasis in early-onset PD, drug-induced movement disorders and in later years in Tourette's syndrome. His contributions in basic research have been focused on dopamine receptor pharmacology, dopamine receptor interactions, and the role of the different subtypes of dopamine receptors in the control of motor behavior in animal models of PD. His research has also contributed to dispel the concept of "in vivo” levodopa toxicity and is presently oriented to explore the expression of genes related to trophism and plasticity by this drug.
Prof. Gershanik actively participates in medical societies, having served in the International Executive Committee of the Movement Disorder Society. He is a member of the Research Committee on Extrapyramidal Disorders of the World Federation of Neurology. He also serves in the Physician Advisory Boards of WE MOVE and the International Tremor Foundation.
Monique Giroux, MD (US) is the Director of Movement Disorders, Outpatient Services in the Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and Medical Director of the National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence for Parkinson's disease. She heads the newly developed Comprehensive Care Program for Parkinson's disease and related movement disorders at Euclid Hospital in Euclid, Ohio.
Dr. Giroux received her medical degree from Ohio State University. She completed her neurology residency at the Yale New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut and her fellowship at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She then joined the Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle, Washington as a staff neurologist. From there she became a clinical instructor for the Department of Neurology at the University of Washington and also Medical Director/Movement Disorder Specialist at Booth Gardner Parkinson's Care Center at Evergreen Hospital Medical Center, Kirkland, WA where she developed a multidisciplinary rehabilitation approach to Parkinson's disease care. She held that position until being asked to join the newly formed Center for Neurological Restoration at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in January of 2004.
Dr. Giroux is a specialist in treating patients with Parkinson's Disease, Tremor, Dystonia and other debilitating conditions. Her goal is to improve quality of life through development of a patient centered approach focusing on health and wellness.
Christopher G. Goetz, MD (US) is Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Neurological Sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois. He also serves as Director of the Section of Movement Disorders of the Department of Neurological Sciences. This Section is a Parkinson's Disease Foundation Center of Excellence and has a three-part mission of research, patient care and education. He has served on the National Tourette Syndrome Association Scientific Advisory Board (1990-1996), and the Medical Advisory Board (1996-2001). Dr. Goetz is a reviewer for several journals and is a former McHenry Award recipient of the American Academy of Neurology and senior Fulbright Scholar. He is a member of the Movement Disorder Society, the American Neurological Association, the American Academy of Neurology, The American Olser Society, and the French Neurological Society. He has published and co-authored fourteen books and monographs, and has authored over 300 peer-reviewed papers, and over 300 invited articles and chapters. His editorial responsibilities include past Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Neuropharmacology, History Section Editor of the Archives of Neurology, Editorial Board Member of Movement Disorders, the Archives of Neurology, and Advisory Editorial Board Member of the Journal of the History of the Neurosciences, as well as reviewer for several neurology journals. He is one of the new co-Editors-in-Chief of the Movement Disorder journal as of January 2004.
His major interest is the pharmacology of various movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome, Huntington's disease and pharmacologic studies of dystonia. He has also led pharmacologic and surgical efforts to treat movement disorders. He is an active researcher in the history of neurology and has written extensively with his major research interest being the study of nineteenth century French and U.S. neurology with particular interest in J-M. Charcot and his school.
Dr. Steve Goldman, MD (US) is the Dean Zutes Chair in the Biology of the Aging Brain, and Professor and Chief of the Division of Cell an d Gene Therapy of the Department of Neurology at the University of Rochester Medical Center. He came to the Rochester from the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, where he was the Nathan Cummings Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, and an Attending Neurologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. A summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, he obtained his PhD from Rockefeller University in 1983, and his MD from Cornell in 1984. His thesis work, with Fernando Nottebohm at Rockefeller, included the first report of neuronal production and migration in the adult vertebrate brain. Dr. Goldman then interned in Medicine and completed his residency in Neurology at the New York Hospital and Memorial Sloan-Kettering. In 1988, after serving a year as Chief Resident in Neurology, he joined the faculty and attending staff at Cornell-New York Hospital. He was promoted to tenured Professor in 1997, and at the time was the youngest full professor of a clinical subspecialty in the Ivy League. Dr. Goldman's laboratory is interested in neural plasticity and regeneration, with a focus on neural stem cells and their use in treating demyelinating and degenerative diseases of the brain and spinal cord. He has published extensively, with over a hundred papers in his field as first or senior author. Dr. Goldman is a recipient of the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award of the NIH, and has been elected to the American Neurological Association and American Society for Clinical Investigation. His work is supported by NINDS, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Hereditary Disease Foundation, the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, the NY Spinal Cord Injury Research Program, the Michael J. Fox Foundation, the Mathers Charitable Foundation, as well as by Berlex, Inc., Aventis Pharmaceuticals and Merck Research Laboratories.
Gladys González-Ramos, PhD (US) is Associate Professor at New York University School of Social Work, and Adjunct Associate Professor of Neurology at the New York University School of Medicine. She received her Masters and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Social Work from NYU. Dr. Gonzalez-Ramos has worked in the field of mental health for over twenty-five years. She has been particularly interested in access to care and developing community- based services for diverse families. Her primary areas of research and publications have been in the provision of culturally-competent services.
For the past several years, Dr. González-Ramos has been working closely with The National Parkinson Foundation, particularly in the areas of service delivery to persons and family caregivers from culturally diverse backgrounds affected by Parkinson disease. Through her work with NPF, she has helped develop several grant funded programs to create nationally-based model educational and care initiatives that are responsive to underserved persons affected by Parkinson disease and that train the allied health professionals who provide care. She helped to develop and is on the social work faculty of the Allied Team Training for Parkinson program, an interdisciplinary model training program for allied health professionals working with persons affected by Parkinson's disease. She is also Co-director of the Community Partners for Parkinson Care, health promotion and community outreach program designed to partner with communities to improve access to Parkinson care.
Tim Greenamyre, MD, PhD (US) received his BS from Michigan State University and his MD and PhD from the University of Michigan. After his Neurology residency at the University of Michigan, he joined the faculty of the University of Rochester in 1990, and was recruited to Emory University in 1995. He moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 2005. He received the Roland B. Mackay Award (1986) and a Research Fellowship Award (1990-1993) from the American Academy of Neurology, and he was a Mallinckrodt Scholar (1994-1997). He chaired the Research Grants Subcommittee of the Huntington's Disease Society of America, and was a member of the NIH Parkinson's Disease Research Agenda Planning Committee, the Parkinson's Disease Implementation Committee and the Neurological Sciences and Disorders B Study Section of the NINDS. He is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Parkinson Study Group, a member of the Executive Committee of the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the Scientific Advisory Committees of the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, the Huntington's Disease Society of America, and Telethon Italy. He is Editor of Neurobiology of Disease, Associate Editor of The Journal of Neuroscience, and Section Editor for Functional Neurology, and he serves on the editorial boards of Neurology, Movement Disorders and Critical Reviews in Neurobiology. He has received several honors and in October 2004, he delivered a Presidential Lecture at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience.
His lab is interested in mechanisms that cause nerve cell death in disorders such as Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer's diseases. With respect to Parkinson's disease, he is interested in interactions between environmental toxins (natural or man-made) and genes that increase or decrease an individual's susceptibility to developing the disease. The work focuses on mitochondrial impairment, oxidative damage and protein aggregation. The general strategy is to define mechanisms that cause nerve cell death, and then use them as potential 'targets' for therapeutic intervention. The lab employs in vivo models of neurodegeneration and in vitro culture of cells and brain slices to study mechanisms of degeneration with a variety of biochemical, anatomical and physiological techniques. Another interest of the lab is the role of glutamate neurotransmission in the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.
Grace Griffith, PT (US) brings a unique perspective on PD to this Congress. A dual career professional who received her physical therapy degree from the University of Maryland in 1978, she has also won numerous awards, a recording contract with a prestigious label, and a loyal local and national following for her singing.
Katrina Gwinn-Hardy, MD (US) joined the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) in January 2001 as Program Director in the neurogenetics cluster (extramural) and staff clinician (Intramural). Her extramural portfolio includes the dominant ataxias, genetics of stroke, neural tube defects, and other disorders. She manages the NINDS Human Genetics Repository (http://locus.umdnj.edu/ninds) which banks cell lines for gene discovery in Parkinsons, Epilepsy, Stroke, and Motor Neuron disease. She is also a Project Officer, along with those from three other NIH institutes, of a multi-site contract which is building an atlas of normal brain development. In the intramural program she continues to see patients with Parkinson's disease in select research projects.
Prior to coming to NINDS, she worked as a faculty member at Mayo Medical School with a major interest in of Parkinson's disease and linkage studies of various movement disorders, including familial parkinsonism. Prior to joining the Mayo Medical School faculty, Dr. Gwinn-Hardy trained as a fellow in Movement Disorders at the Mayo Clinic, as a neurology resident at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and as a medical student at Vanderbilt. She has held positions as a research assistant at the Department of Molecular Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and served as a laboratory technician at the Tufts Medical School Cancer Research Center. Dr. Gwinn-Hardy was a Wellesley Scholar who received her undergraduate degree in brain and behavior at Wellesley College in 1982.
In 1990, Dr. Gwinn-Hardy received the Amos Christie Award in pediatrics, the Dystonia Travel Award in 1995. Other notable awards include in 1998 when she was elected as one of America's Best Doctors by her peers. She received the NIH Directors award in 2004. Dr. Gwinn-Hardy has authored or coauthored over 85 peer reviewed articles, as well as multiple book chapters.
Barbara Habermann PhD, RN (US) has over 20 years experience working with people with Parkinson's disease. She previously worked as an advanced practice nurse in an outpatient movement disorder clinic. During the last ten years, she has been conducting research with persons with this illness and their family members. Her early studies focused on how individuals with PD manage and cope with the illness, particularly those individuals that are diagnosed in middle life. Her research has expanded to include how the illness impacts the family over time. She is currently the Site Principal investigator on a study funded by the National Institutes of Health designed to test a skill training intervention for Parkinson's caregivers.
Peter Hagell, R.N., PhD (Sweden) is associate professor at the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. Dr. Hagell has a clinical background as a neuroscience nurse and subspecialized in movement disorders. He received his Ph.D. (doctor of medical science, in the field of neurology) from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, Lund University, Lund, Sweden. His scientific background involves the study of graft effects and function in cell replacement therapy for Parkinson's disease. Current scientific interest and activities are focused on measuring and understanding outcomes in Parkinson's disease, and involves development, application and evaluation of health economic, clinician- and patient-reported outcome measures, with an emphasis on methodological aspects such as measurement validity and interpretation. Dr. Hagell is the current scientific chair and vice president of the Word Federation of Neuroscience Nurses (WFNN), and has served on several editorial, organizing and scientific committees as well as in leadership positions of professional organizations. Dr. Hagell has received several awards, including the Swedish Parkinson's Disease Association's Bronze Medal of Honor, and the WFNN Agnes Marshall Research Award.
Ruth Hagestuen, RN (US) (Steering Committee and Chair of the Program Subcommittee for Care-givers and Patients) is Director of Field Services for the National Parkinson Foundation. She plans, coordinates and directs the delivery of program services to the Parkinson community through their network of Centers of Excellence, Care Centers, Outreach Centers, Chapters, and support groups. She is director of the Allied Team Training for Parkinson's (ATTP) program, a program designed to train allied health care professionals and teams to provide state of the art, culturally competent, interdisciplinary care in Parkinson's disease, and is co-director of the Community Partners Program, a program designed to address health care disparities in the Parkinson community.
Ruth has lived and worked for about 13 years as a nurse and collaborator in developing health care programs first in Madagascar and then in Bangladesh. Her work with Parkinson's disease began in 1987. Ruth has extensive clinical experience as an RN working on an interdisciplinary team dedicated to the care of persons with Parkinson's and has been active through the years in the development of support services and comprehensive care programs designed to serve people with Parkinson's and their families. Her passion continues to be that of collaborating to improve healthcare strategies designed to meet needs of people whose lives are affected by Parkinson's disease as they strive to achieve maximum quality of life.
Janet Hamburg, MA, CMA, RSMT (US) is a certified Laban Movement Analyst (CMA) and a professor of dance in the Department of Music and Dance at the University of Kansas. She received her master's degree in dance from Mills College and her certification in Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) from the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies in New York City. She is a Senior Research Associate for the Laban/Bartenieff Institute and in 2004 received the Laban/Bartenieff Institute's first Laban Award for Creative Achievement by an artist or researcher. She also is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist (RSMT) through the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association, based in New York City.
Hamburg has presented Laban-based research at national and international conferences and has taught LMA classes in Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, as well as throughout the United States. Her research interests include coordination problems in children and adults, movement efficiency for athletes, movement problems of older adults and movement therapy for people with Parkinson's disease.
Hamburg's work with athletes has been featured on NBC national television and the U.S. Information Agency's international program Science World. Her Bartenieff Fundamentals-based pre-warm-ups for aerobic and resistance workouts were featured in Shape Magazine and her LMA approach to exercise and fitness appears in Moving and Motivating with Laban Movement Analysis in Mind-Body Fitness for Dummies.
Hamburg has created movement programs for the Center on Aging at the University of Kansas Medical Center and the Parkinson's Disease Foundation in New York City. She has given presentations at medical centers and symposia throughout the United States. Her research on Parkinson's disease resulted in an exercise video/DVD, Motivating Moves for People with Parkinson's, which is distributed internationally by the Parkinson's Disease Foundation in New York City and praised by other national and regional Parkinson's foundations. For more information, visit http://www.motivatingmoves.com.
John Hardy, MD (US) is a human geneticist and molecular biologist whose research interests focus on neurological disease. Dr. Hardy received his B.Sc. (Hons) degree from the University of Leeds, UK (1976) and his Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, UK where he studied dopamine and amino acid neuropharmacology. Dr. Hardy performed his postdoctoral training at the MRC Neuropathogenesis Unit in Newcastle upon Tyne, England and then further postdoctoral work at the Swedish Brain Bank in Umea, Sweden where he
started to work on Alzheimer's disease. He became Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at St. Mary's Hospital, Imperial College, London in 1985 and initiated genetic studies of Alzheimer's disease there. He became Associate Professor in 1989 and then took the Pfeiffer Endowed Chair of Alzheimer's Research at the University of South Florida, in Tampa in 1992. In 1996 he moved to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, as Consultant and Professor of Neuroscience. He became Chair of Neuroscience in 2000 and
moved to NIA as Chief of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics in 2001. He has won the MetLife, the Allied Signal and the Potamkin Prize for his work in describing the first genetic mutations, in the amyloid gene in Alzheimer's disease, in 1991.
Gun-Marie Hariz, PhD (Sweden) obtained a degree in Occupational Therapy in Stockholm in 1979. In 2002 she completed a Ph.D. at Umeå University with a thesis titled: "Stereotactic surgery in patients with Parkinson's disease and Essential tremor: Evaluation of Activities of Daily Living and Health Related Quality of Life."
She has published seven papers in peer reviewed journals, mainly on the evaluation of ADL in surgical Parkinson's disease and essential tremor patients and on the gender differences in surgery for Parkinson's disease. She has been an invited speaker to meetings in Sweden, Spain, The Netherlands and the US. She is an ad-hoc reviewer for Acta Neurologica Scandinavica and for Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry.
She is currently working on research grants from the following organizations: Vårdal Foundation, The Foundation for Healthcare in Northern Sweden, and The Swedish Association of the Neurologically Disabled. For the last three years she has been senior lecturer in occupational therapy at the Department of Community Medicine and Rehabilitation, Umeå University, Sweden.
Marti Haykin, MD (US) received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Virginia and her master of fine arts degree in printmaking from Indiana University. She taught studio art at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, Georgia for five years before attending medical school. She received her MD degree from the Medical College of Georgia and will soon complete her residency in neurology at Yale University.
Susan Heath, RN, MS (US) is the Associate Clinical Director of the San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVA), Parkinson's Disease Research Education and Clinical Center (PADRECC). Susan has worked at the SFVA for 15 yrs as a neurosurgery advanced practice nurse. Over the past six years Susan has coordinated patient care for SFVA's Center for Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders program in collaboration with Dr. Philip Starr and William J. Marks, Jr. She helped to develop a national surgical program for movement disorder patients and coordinated those who received deep brain implants. Susan is considered an expert deep brain implant programmer and is a national speaker on the topic of management of patients with deep brain implants.
Susan earned her Master of Science degree from the University of California, San Francisco, Department of Physiological Nursing in 1989 and became a Neuroscience Clinical Nurse Specialist. She specializes in the Neurosciences and has expertise in general neurosurgery and continues to develop her expertise in the area of movement disorders.
Peter Heutink, PhD (The Netherlands) has been trained as a molecular biologist at the University of Amsterdam and started his Ph.D. project in 1988 at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, The Netherlands were he worked with Doctors Oostra and Sandkuijl on developing strategies for the mapping of genetic risk factors for complex diseases. After receiving his Ph.D. Dr. Heutink started his own research group and worked on numerous gene mapping and identification studies at the department of Clinical Genetics of the Erasmus University. Over the years he located many disease genes, and by positional cloning strategies identified pathogenic mutations in genes for frontal temporal dementia, hereditary hemochromatosis, benign hereditary chorea, autosomal dominant ataxia and early onset Parkinson's disease.
In 2003 Dr. Heutink moved to the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam were he became the head of the newly founded section of Medical Genomics of the Department of Human Genetics. The main line of research is to identify and characterize genetic risk factors for complex neurological disorders, for neurodegenerative disorders such as dementia and parkinsonism but also for behavioral traits such as attention and depression.
Dr. Heutink is the director of the Center of Integrated Genomics of the VU University and coordinator of Epidemiology for the national center of excellence: The Center for Medical Systems Biology (CMSB).
Etienne Hirsch, MD (France) is a neurobiologist involved in research on Parkinson's disease and related disorders. He obtained his PhD in 1988 from the University of Paris VI (Pierre et Marie Curie) and is currently the chairman of the INERM Unit 289 " Experimental neurology and therapeutics " at Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris. His work is aimed at understanding the cause of neuronal degeneration in Parkinson's disease and is focused on the role of the glial cells, the inflammatory cytokines and apoptosis but also on the consequences of neuronal degeneration in the circuitries downstream to the lesions.
Currently, he is chairing the neuroscience section at INSERM (French NIH) and is the Chairman of the scientific committee of the Association France Parkinson (patient association).
Dr Shu-Leong Ho, MD, FRCP (Hong Kong) is an Associate Professor and the Chief Neurologist at the University Department of Medicine, University of Hong Kong, and an Honorary Consultant at Queen Mary Hospital and Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong. He graduated from the University of Wales College of Medicine, UK in 1986, obtained his MRCP in 1989, his MD in 1995, and elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Physicians. His interest lies in the pathogenesis and treatment of Parkinson's disease.
Margaret Holloway, PhD, BA Hons, CQSW, ILTM (UK) (formerly Lloyd) is Professor of Social Work at the University of Hull, UK. She has long experience in the education and training of social workers, and before her academic career practised as a social worker, specialising latterly in health-related fields. Her research interests encompass death, dying and bereavement, service delivery at the health and social care interface, and spirituality and spiritual care. Since 1996 she has been researching social aspects of Parkinson’s disease and served as Chair of the Welfare Research Committee of the Parkinson’s Disease Society UK and latterly as Vice- Chair of its combined medical and social Research Advisory Panel. She has given numerous international conference presentations out of her research into Parkinson’s, including the 6th European Congress on Research in Rehabilitation, 1998, Berlin; the Fourth International Conference on Long-term Care/Case Management, San Diego, 1998; European Parkinson’s Disease Society Annual Conference, Vienna, 2000; the 5th International Care/Case Management Conference, Vancouver, 2001; the 17th World Congress of the International Association of Gerontology, Vancouver, 2001; and the Third International Conference on Family Care, Washington DC, 2002.
She is currently researching the attitudes and beliefs of Chinese older people in the UK about cancer and end-of-life care, and is planning research under the Department of Health’s Long-term Neurological Conditions programme into models of integrated assessment appropriate for people with neurological conditions, and the effectiveness of user-led care pathway approaches to the management of the disease in the community. This work has developed from a study she undertook of community care assessment for people with Parkinson’s disease and their carers and a further study piloting a user-led care pathway framework for Parkinson’s disease which encompasses the health and social care network. This care pathway is being utilised in two neurology centres in the UK.
Oleh Hornykiewicz, M.D. (Austria) is professor emeritus of the University of Toronto (1992) and the (Medical) University of Vienna (1995). Between 1951 and 1967, he trained and worked as a pharmacologist in the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Vienna and the Department of Pharmacology at Oxford University. From 1967 to 1977, he was full professor of pharmacology and psychiatry, at the University of Toronto and from 1977 to retirement, Professor and Head of the Institute of Biochemical Pharmacology of the University of Vienna and Head of the Human Brain Laboratory at the Clarke Institute of the University of Toronto. In 1960, he discovered the dopamine deficiency in the postmortem brain of patients with Parkinson's disease, and in 1961, he initiated the first clinical trials of levodopa to treat the disorder. In the last 45 years, his research has centered on neurotransmitter, especially dopamine, changes in Parkinson's disease and various other basal ganglia disorders, on which topic he has extensively published. For his work in this area, he has received numerous honours, prizes and distinctions. He has been on the Research / Medical / Scientific Advisory Board of about 13 Research Foundations, and he is Honorary Member of several professional societies. He is full, elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina. Presently, he is Distinguished Professor of Brain Disorders Research at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and he continues his research as professor emeritus at the Center for Brain Research of the Medical University of Vienna.
Robert Iansek, MD (Australia) is Professor of Geriatric Neurology at Monash University in Melbourne, and Director of the Victorian Comprehensive Parkinson Program (VCPP) as well as Director of Geriatric Research Unit at the Kingston Centre in Melbourne.
He is a Neurologist by training and has over 25 years neurophysiological research experience, having published over 150 articles, books and videos. His main research interests concern basal ganglia function and malfunction in Parkinson's disease.
Professor Iansek has used this research knowledge to develop and utilise a specific rehabilitation program for people with Parkinson's disease. The rehabilitation approach is combined with multi disciplinary teams and applied in a holistic manner to revolutionise treatment by providing a lifelong tailored approach to management of people with Parkinson's. The program is currently administered through two public hospitals, three private hospitals, with five multi disciplinary clinics, 30 inpatient beds and a community based carer support service in the South Eastern region of Melbourne. Telehealth complements the service by providing the same program, at a distance, to numerous country locations around Victoria and interstate. The program has now been running for ten years and is responsible for approximately 5,000 patients.
The program is scientifically based and specifically tailored to people with Parkinson's. It is clinically effective and provides substantial cost savings to the health dollar. Rehabilitation is utilised with medical and surgical treatment to optimise functional difficulties commonly experienced in everyday life, which threatens independence and quality of life. Rehabilitation strategies are as effective as medication in reversing the symptoms of Parkinson's. Professor Iansek is currently the President of the Asian & Pacific Parkinson's disease Association and will be hosting the 5 th International Symposium on Parkinson's disease in Melbourne 2005. He is also on the Editorial Board of the Movement Disorder Journal and serves on the Education and Membership Committees of the International Movement Disorder Society.
Susan Imke, MS, RN (US) is an advanced nurse practitioner holding dual certification in gerontology and family healthcare. She earned a Master of Science Degree in Community Health Education from the University of North Texas and is President of Senior Health Solutions, a geriatric consultation practice in Ft Worth, Texas.
Imke currently serves on the board of the Society for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, and is a member of the Center of Excellence review panel for the National Parkinson Foundation. She has authored numerous articles for families living with chronic neurological disease and speaks frequently to healthcare professionals and support group audiences on topics related to chronic illness and and family caregiving.
Ole Isacson, MD (US) is Professor of Neurology (Neuroscience) at Harvard Medical School , Director of the Center for Neuroregeneration Research and the McLean Hospital/Harvard University Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence, Belmont, MA, and a Chair of the Regeneration and Repair Program, Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair. Prof. Isacson's Harvard Medical School affiliated laboratory works on scientific models and new concepts for therapies for neurodegenerative diseases including cell replacement, regeneration and protection, which have resulted in discoveries that led to clinical trials for Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. He is Receiving Editor of the European Journal of Neuroscience, past President of the American Society for Neural Transplantation and Repair, member elect of the American Academy of Neurology, the American Society of Transplantation and the council of the Intl. Cell Transplantation Society. He serves as a reviewer and advisor to the NIH, DOD, Parkinson community groups and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. He has received international prizes, research awards and lectureships, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Lindahl Award and the Bernard Sanberg Memorial Award. He is author or co-author of over 200 scientific research publications in neuroscience and neurology, and three books in his field.
Tom Isaacs (UK) was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease ten years ago, at the young age of 27 and since 1999 has raised over $800,000 for Parkinson's Disease research projects. Having already raised $70,000 completing a 1250 mile walk from one end of UK to the other, he left his job as a director of a London property company in 2002 to undertake his Coastin’ challenge. Between April 2002 and April 2003, Tom walked 4,500 miles around the coastline of Britain, climbed the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales and ran the London Marathon, with the aim of raising funds and to help build awareness and understanding of the disease. During that year Tom met representatives from over 90 Parkinson's Disease groups around the coast, gave more than 190 interviews to local and national media and walked with more than 40 MPs, nine Mayors, and 16 celebrities. Tom was runner up in the GMTV/Daily Mirror Fundraiser of the Year Award 2004 and is currently UK Charity Personality of the Year 2004/2005. In late 2004, Tom launched the Cure Parkinson’s Trust which expects to raise circa $4million over a 5 year period. Tom believes he will be cured of Parkinson’s and promotes this positive message wherever he can. He has an unfortunate tendency to sing.
Pnina Isseroff, MA (Israel) is a professional singer, voice teacher, actor, voice-over artist, composer, writer and choir conductor with thirty years of performance and teaching experience. Most recently she has been using her combined music and bodywork, Energetic Singing, as a therapeutic tool, working with groups through the Parkinson's Association of Israel. Ms. Isseroff holds an MA in Choir Conducting from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, NJ, and is a member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She is a certified instructor of the Seven Lotus Qi-Gong. Ms. Isseroff is also the Musical Director, in-house composer and one of the founders of the Guild Theatre Company of Israel.
Aleksandar Janca, MD, MSc, FRCPsych, FRANZCP (Australia) is currently Professor of Psychiatry and Head of the Unit of Mental Health Epidemiology at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, University of Western Australia. He also works as Consultant Psychiatrist at Royal Perth Hospital and is Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre in Perth. He currently holds adjunct professorial appointments at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri and University of Memphis in Memphis, Tennessee.
Dr Janca finished his medical studies and postgraduate training in psychiatry and neurology in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. He started his international research career in 1987 as a Fulbright Scholar at the Department of Psychiatry, Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri. From 1991 to 1997 he worked as a Medical Officer at WHO Headquarters in Geneva and was responsible for coordination of the ICD-10 field trials and a number of other international research projects in the areas of psychiatric epidemiology and transcultural psychiatry.
Dr Janca is an Individual Member of the World Psychiatric Association and Fellow of the British Royal College of Psychiatrists, Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, American Psychiatric Association, European Association of Psychiatrists and a number of other national and international professional organisations.
Dr Janca's publication record comprises about 200 publications including journal papers, books, book chapters, WHO documents and ICD-10 psychiatric assessment instruments.
Joseph Jankovic, MD received his MD degree at the University of Arizona, Dr. Jankovic completed medicine internship at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston in 1974. He subsequently completed residency in Neurology at the Neurological Institute, Columbia University, New York City, where he was selected as the Chief Resident. While there he obtained additional training in movement disorders with Stanley Fahn , MD. In 1977 he joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine and established the Parkinson's Disease Center and Movement Disorders Clinic (PDCMDC). Dr. Jankovic was promoted to a full professor of Neurology and a senior attending at The Methodist Hospital in 1988. The PDCMDC has been recognized as a "Center of Excellence" by the National Parkinson Foundation and the Huntington Disease Society of America
Dr. Jankovic has conducted numerous clinical trials and directs active basic science research program. He has published over 600 original articles and chapters and has edited or co-edited 35 books and volumes. In addition to Parkinson's disease and other parkinsonian disorders, Dr. Jankovic's publications have covered tremors, dystonia, Tourette syndrome, Huntington disease, myoclonus, tardive dyskinesia, restless legs syndrome, paroxysmal dyskinesias, various neurodegenerative disorders, and medical, surgical, and experimental therapeutics of movement disorders. Dr. Jankovic is an editor of several on-line books and journals including Neurology in Clinical Practice, Neurology Medlink, and Therapy. He has also served on editorial boards of Neurology, Movement Disorders, Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, Journal of Neurological Sciences, Clinical Neuropharmacology, Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, and other journals, and is currently the Chairman of the Journal Oversight Committee, Movement Disorders Society. He has trained over 50 fellows and other physicians and researchers many of whom have become leaders in the field of movement disorders.
Dr. Jankovic is past president of the international Movement Disorder Society. Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN), he has been an examiner for the ABPN and for the American Board of Neurological Surgeons. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), and active member of the American Neurological Association, Society for Neuroscience, Parkinson Study Group, Tourette Syndrome Study Group, Dystonia Study Group, Huntington Study Group, Tremor Research Group, and other professional and scientific organizations. Dr. Jankovic has organized and chaired numerous national and international scientific symposia. Since 1990, along with Drs. Fahn, Marsden, Hallett and Jenner, he has co-directed the annual course "A Comprehensive Review of Movement Disorders”, in Aspen, Colorado. He has also directed the annual AAN course on Movement Disorders and Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Update, and has co-directed the annual seminar "Unusual Movement Disorders”. He is current or past member of scientific and medical advisory boards of many national foundations including the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, International Tremor Foundation, Tourette Syndrome Association, Society for Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, The Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson Foundation, and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. He is the founder and past chairman of the Medical Advisory Board for the Benign Essential Blepharospasm Research Foundation. Dr. Jankovic is a recipient of several prestigious awards and has been invited as a named lecturer and a visiting professor to many U.S. and foreign universities. In 2004 Dr. Jankovic was selected by fellow scientists as Highly Cited Researcher (ISIHighlyCited.com). Dr. Jankovic has been elected as an Honorary Member of the Australian Association of Neurologists, Panamanian Neurosurgical and Neurological Society, and French Neurological Society, and is listed in Best Doctors in America, America's Top Doctors, and in Who's Who in America, World, Health and Medical Services, Medicine and Healthcare, Education, and in Who's Who in Science and Engineering. (For further information log on to www.jankovic.org).
Kurt A. Jellinger, MD (Austria) is Professor of Neurology and Neuropathology at Vienna Medical University in Vienna, Austria. He was staff member of the Neurological Institute (Obersteiner Institute) at the University of Vienna (1957-1976), chief of the Div. of Special Pathology at the Neurological Institute, Vienna (1981-1976), later director of the Department of Neurology, Lainz-Teaching Hospital, Vienna (1976-1997), and director of the Ludwig Boltzmann-Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, Vienna, Austria (1977-2002). After his retirement from the clinical position, he was guest professor of Neurology at the Univerities of Innsbruck (1998-2000) and Graz (2001 and 2002), Austria. Since 2002, he is chief of the Institute of Clinical Neurobiology, Vienna, Austria.
His research fields are clinical neuropathology, neuro-oncology, brain and spinal cord trauma, and, during the recent years, neuropathology, neurochemistry, and pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders, in particular Alzheimer and Parkinson diseases, and other movement and dementia disorders.
Dr. Jellinger has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles in international referreed journals, over 500 reviews, proceedings, and many book chapters; and has given almost 1200 platform papers or invited reviews at national and international meetings. He has served on many boards and committees, and is member of many national and international scientific societies, was president of the Austrian Associations of Neuropathology, Neurology and Neuro-oncology, vice president of the International Society of Neuropathology, member of the American Neurological Association, chairman of the EFNS Scientific Panel on Neuropathology, Austrian liaison officer of the Movement Disorder Society. He is honorary member of the French Neurological Society, of the European Society of Clinical Neuropharmacology, of the German Parkinson Society, the Austria Alzheimer, Neurology and Neuropatholoy Societies.
Dr. Jellinger was executive editor of Acta Neuropathologica (1978-2004) and chapter editor of Neurodegeneration (2003). He serves on the Editorial Boards of many international scientific journals and ad-hoc referee for many neurologic, neuropathologic, and other medical journals. He received many scientific awards, the Alzheimer Obelisk for research in Alzheimer disease, the Meritorial Service Award of the American Association of Neuropathologists, the Lundbeck Award for Parkinson research, and the A.M.Jakob medal of the German Association of Neuropathology. He is currently directing studies on the relations between vascular disorders and Alzheimer disease, the morphological basis of dementia in parkinsonism, clinico-pathological relations in dementia, the diagnostic impact of tau pathology in the olfactory system, the role of alpha-synuclein and tau and search for biological markers in CSF and plasma in neurodegenerastive disorders.
Peter Jenner, BPharm (Hons), PhD, DSc, FRPharmS (UK) Jenner was Head of the Division of Pharmacology & Therapeutics in the Guy's, King's & St Thomas' School of Biomedical Sciences at King's College London, until 2004. He is a Director of the Neurodegenerative Diseases Research Centre and the National Parkinson Foundation Centre of Excellence. He leads a 20-strong internationally recognised research team that focus on the cause, treatment and cure of Parkinson's disease. In particular, he has contributed significantly to the concept of oxidative stress as a cause of the progression of nigral cell death in Parkinson's disease. In addition, he has been responsible for developing novel compounds for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and the avoidance of dyskinesia through the use of experimental models of the illness. Professor Jenner has published more than 400 papers in peer reviewed journals, written in excess of 100 review articles and book chapter and written or edited numerous monographs. He is a frequent speaker at international congresses and acts as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. Professor Jenner is a member of the Medical Advisory Panel of the Parkinson's Disease Society of the United Kingdom and he regularly talks to lay audiences at branches of the Society.
Russell Katz, MD (US) received his Bachelor's Degree in Mathematics from Queens College, New York, in 1975. He graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York in 1977 and did a General Surgery Internship and 2 years of a Neurological Surgery Residency, followed by 2 years of a Neurology Residency. He started at the FDA in 1983 as a medical reviewer in the Neuropharmacology Division, and became Deputy Director of that division about 2-3 years later. Hewas acting director of the division from January 1999 to November 1999, after which he was appointed Director, a position which he holds presently.
Karl Kieburtz, MD, MPH, (US) is Professor of Neurology and of Community and Preventive Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in Rochester, New York. His primary clinical and research interests are in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases affecting the basal ganglia, particularly Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, and HIV related neurologic disorders. He has been an active participant in the research activities of the Parkinson Study Group since 1989, and directs the Coordination Center for this and other multi-center academic consortia, including the Huntington Study Group. He is the principal investigator for the NINDS sponsored trials of neuroprotective agents for PD. His publications and presentations have focused on experimental therapeutics and clinical research design strategies.
Beth Kirkwood, OT (Australia) is an occupational therapist and Parkinson's educator from Melbourne, Australia. In 1993, together with neurologist Professor Robert Iansek and physiotherapist Professor Meg Morris, she established the first Movement Disorders Clinic in Australia at Melbourne's Kingston Centre. Presently she works with Professor Iansek and co-ordinates Movement Disorders Programs at Epworth Rehabilitation Brighton and Elsternwick Private Hospital in Melbourne. Her specialist knowledge of Parkinson's and the role of allied health professionals in teaching rehabilitation strategies and seeking solutions to everyday problems, has made her an expert educator in this area. She has co-authored and contributed to several books and regularly lectures and conducts workshops in Australia and overseas on the multi-disciplinary approach to rehabilitation for Parkinson's.
Gale Kittle, RN, MPH (US) works in clinical research at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center and the Barrow Neurological Institute (BNI), in Phoenix, Arizona.
Gale obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from Arizona State University and a Master of Public Health degree from the University of Arizona. She has practiced neuroscience nursing for nearly 20 years, with experience in acute, intensive and outpatient care as well as clinical research. Gale was the Program Coordinator of the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Research Center at BNI, where she developed, managed and evaluated programs for patients and caregivers. In this role, Gale developed and implemented Ali Care, a statewide program that provides prescription medication and other support services to underserved people with Parkinson's disease. She continued her involvement in the Parkinson's community as a consultant with the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF), where she developed, wrote and edited educational publications, facilitated the NPF Publications Committee and served on the Editorial Board. Gale was also instrumental in developing Caregiver Connections, NPF's signature program for caregivers.
Gale has presented at national and international conferences on topics such as nursing issues and caregiving. She contributed a chapter on nursing care for neurodegenerative diseases in Medical Surgical Nursing: Preparation for Practice, a nursing textbook scheduled for publication in 2005. Her primary interests include dementia, Parkinson's disease, health literacy, caregiving and outreach to diverse communities.
Morton M. Kondracke (US) is a Washington journalist, Parkinson's Disease activist and author of Saving Milly: Love, Politics and Parkinson's Disease. He is currently executive editor and columnist at Roll Call, the newspaper of Capitol Hill, and a regular commentator on the Fox News Channel. Previously, he was White House correspondent for the Chicago Sun-Times, an editor at The New Republic, Washington bureau chief of Newsweek and a panelist on The McLaughlin Group. He serves on the boards of the Parkinson's Action Network and the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research. His book, a memoir of his late wife's 17-year struggle with Parkinson's was published in 2001 and was the basis for a CBS Sunday Night Movie in March 2005.
Vladimir S. Kostic, MD, PhD (Serbia) Professor of Neurology at the Medical School, University of Belgrade, Corresponding Member of the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, Chairman of the Institute of Neurology, Clinical Center of Serbia, has focused his scientific interest in degenerative disorders of the central nervous system, mainly etiopathogenesis and treatment.
In the course of his training and subsequent academic carrier he spent two monts at the Middlesex Hospital in London (1987), as a Fulbright Fellow 15 months (1989/1990) at the Neurological Institute of the Columbia University (New York; USA), and finally, in the same institution as a Visiting Research Scientist 13 more months (1995/1996).
He is the author of 5 textbooks and editor of 11 monographies. He is also the author and co-author of more than 100 full papers in the peer-reviewed journals. He is the head of several scientific projects mainly devoted to the genetic background of neurodegenerative disorders. In the field of Parkinson's disease his group is dealed with cognitive and affective problems in these patients.
Allan Kroland, D.C. (US) Dr. Kroland has been in health care for more than 25 years and has focused on empowering others to live healthy and happy lives. Dr. Kroland has drawn from many formal and informal sources to aid in the education and support of patients. Now, challenged with Parkinson's disease himself, his unique background and personality encourage People Living With Parkinson's and their care partners to lead healthy lifestyles and become proactive in the fight for a cure for PD.
Dr. Kroland has an undergraduate degree in Psychology, and in 1983 earned his Doctor of Chiropractic degree. In private practice he incorporated both nutrition, exercise and lifestyle change to help patients with both physical and psychological pain.
In addition to speaking with PD support groups around the U.S. , Dr. Kroland was a member of the planning committee for the National Parkinson Foundation (NPF)-Young Onset Parkinson Network second annual conference and also spoke at the 2004 event in Minneapolis on complimentary medicine. He has been a featured guest on television and radio talk shows in the Southeast and the Midwest and is currently a member of the volunteer advisory panel for complimentary and alternative medicine with NPF, as well as a member of the American Public Health Association.
Dr. Kroland has spoken with thousands of people about health care concerns and has discovered a common theme: people are not satisfied with their state of health and energy. Dr. Kroland's philosophy is while waiting for a cure…stay as vital and healthy as you possibly can.
Roger Kurlan, MD (USA) is Professor of Neurology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He received a BA degree from the University of Rochester and an MD degree from Washington University School of Medicine. He completed residency in Neurology and fellowship in Movement Disorders and Clinical Neuropharmacology at the University of Rochester.
Dr. Kurlan is a recognized expert in the diagnosis and care of patients with neurological movement disorders. He has published extensively on multiple aspects of movement disorders, including phenomenology, epidemiology, experimental therapeutics, cognitive and behavioral features and genetics. His research work has focused on Parkinson's disease and Tourette's syndrome. Dr. Kurlan has a consistent record of research funding for his work, mostly from the NIH.
J. William Langston, MD (US) is the Scientific Director, Chief Operating Officer, and Founder of the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale , California . A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Medicine, he served as a faculty member at Stanford University and Chairman of Neurology at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose , California , before founding the Parkinson's Institute. He is internationally recognized for the discovery of the link between a chemical known as MPTP and parkinsonism, which has provided a new tool to study Parkinson's disease and which also stimulated great interest in the possibility that environmental factors may play a role in causing the disease. His current research interests include the study of mechanisms of neuronal degeneration, the etiology of Parkinson's disease, and the development of new strategies to slow or halt disease progression. Dr. Langston published 300 papers on Parkinson's disease and related disorders and has received many awards for his work, the most recent of which was the Movement Disorders Research Award from the American Academy of Neurology. Dr. Langston serves on numerous editorial boards and advisory committees, and is also Chief Scientific Advisor for Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Disease Research. He is also a devoted father, soccer coach, and skier.
Peter T. Lansbury, Jr., Ph.D. (USA) received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Princeton University in 1980 and his doctorate in organic chemistry with Nobel laureate E. J. Corey from Harvard University in 1985. After a postdoctoral fellowship with the late Tom Kaiser at the Rockefeller University, he joined the faculty of Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor of chemistry in 1988. He moved to his present position in 1996. Among his other honors, he received the Zeneca Pharmaceuticals Excellence in Chemistry Award in 1995, the Abbott Distinguished Investigator Award in 1993, a Zenith Fellows award from the Alzheimer's Association (1999), and was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995. Dr. Lansbury is director of the Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He is on the Scientific Advisory boards of the Institute for the Study of Aging, the Parkinson's Action Network, and the Boston Cure Project for Multiple Sclerosis. He serves on the editorial boards of Accounts of Chemical Research and Journal of Molecular Biology.
The Lansbury research group has made important contributions towards the understanding of the underlying etiology of neurodegenerative diseases; including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and mad cow disease. They have focused on elucidation of the process of abnormal protein aggregation, a shared feature of all of these diseases. Their experimental findings have laid the groundwork for the design of a novel class of therapeutics that seek to inhibit this process. The group is currently focused on translating their basic discoveries into lead compounds that will spur the development of new drugs to slow neurodegeneration.
Michael K. Lee, PhD (US) received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at University of Virginia (1991) and received his postdoctoral training from Dr. Don W. Cleveland at Johns Hopkins University. He is currently an assistant professor at Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Lee's major interests are to study the biology of mutated proteins implicated in neurodegenerative disease using transgenic mouse models. Dr. Lee was the first to show that mutations in neurofilament-L can cause motor neuron disease in transgenic mice, which was later confirmed to be a model for CMT2A. Dr. Lee was also a major contributor to developing mouse models of familial motor neuron disease (mutant SOD1 transgenic mice) and familial Alzheimer's disease (mutant Presenilin 1 transgenic mice). In the last several years, he has focused on generating a mouse model of alpha-synucleinopathy and the cell biology of alpha-synuclein. In particular, Dr. Lee's group has generated lines of human alpha-synuclein transgenic mice that develop many features of human alpha-synucleinopathy, including abnormal neuronal aggregation of alpha-synuclein, neuronal degeneration, and motoric abnormalities. More recently, Dr. Lee has shown that alpha-synuclein is subjected to carboxy-terminal truncation in brain, which is enhanced by the presence of familial Parkinson's disease linked mutations on alpha-synuclein. Because these carboxy-terminally truncated alpha-synuclein can promote alpha-synuclein aggregation, the biology underlying metabolism of alpha-synuclein may be of pathogenic significance.
Andrew Lees, M.D., FRCP (UK) is Director of the Reta Lila Weston Institute of Neurological Studies at the University College London, and Professor of Neurology at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square, London. He is Director of the Queen Square Brain Bank for Neurological Disorders and the Sara Koe PSP Research Centre. He is President-Elect of the Movement Disorder Society, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Movements Disorders Journal. Professor Lees resurrected the use of subcutaneous apomorphine as an effective treatment for late stage Parkinson's, and has written a biography on Ray Kennedy, the former England football player who tragically developed Parkinson's disease at the age of 35. He is an Appeal Steward to the British Boxing Board of Control, author of the monograph "Tics and Related Disorders", and Co-author of "Parkinson's Disease, The Facts". He is Chairman of the Medical Advisory Panel of the PSP (Association) Europe and an advisor to the UK Medical Research Council. He is a visiting Professor to Universidade Federal de Ceara, Fortaleza, Brazil. He has published more than 300 original scientific publications on movement disorders and is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher on the ISI "Highly Cited Researchers" database.
Carol Levine (US) joined the United Hospital Fund in New York City in October 1996 where she directs the Families and Health Care Project. This project focuses on developing partnerships between health care professionals and family caregivers, who provide most of the long-term and chronic care to elderly, seriously ill, or disabled relatives. She was director of the Citizens Commission on AIDS in New York City from 1987-91 and director of the Orphan Project 1991-96. As a senior staff associate of The Hastings Center, she edited the Hastings Center Report. In 1993 she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her work in AIDS policy and ethics.
She edited Always On Call: When Illness Turns Families into Caregivers , which was published in 2000 by the United Hospital Fund; a revised and expanded edition was published by Vanderbilt University Press in 2004. She is the author of Making Room for Family Caregivers: Seven Innovative Hospital Programs, a United Hospital Special Report published in 2003, and with Thomas H. Murray, co-editor of The Cultures of Caregiving: Conflict and Common Ground among Families, Health Professionals and Policy Makers , to be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2004. She is also editor of Family Caregivers on the Job: Moving Beyond ADLs and IADLs (New York: United Hospital Fund, 2004) and guest editor of the Winter 2003-2004 issue of Generations, published by the American Society on Aging, titled "Family Caregiving: Current Challenges for a Time-Honored Practice."
She has written several books and articles, including a "Sounding Board" essay in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled "The Loneliness of the Long-Term Care Giver" (May 20, 1999). She has published articles and reviews in Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the American Geriatric Society, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Health Affairs, as well as in the popular press.
She received a BA in history from Cornell University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and an MA from Columbia University in public law and government. She received a Ford Foundation Foreign Area Training Fellowship for study in Columbia's Russian Institute.
Irene Litvan, MD (US) is the Raymond Lee Lebby endowed Professor of Parkinson Disease Research at the University of Louisville and the Director of its Movement Disorder Program. She has published numerous peer-reviewed articles on the diagnosis of neurodegenerative parkinsonian, and dementia disorders, as well as on the neuropsychiatry of cortical and subcortical dementias. She was senior editor of the first book on progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) (Oxford University Press, 1992), senior editor of the first book on corticobasal degeneration (CBD) (Lippincott-Press, 2000) and editor of a book on atypical parkinsonian disorders (Humana Press, 2005).
Dr. Litvan is a member of the American Neurologic Association and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. She serves or has served on many boards and committees, including the Executive Committee of the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Dementia, Movement Disorder Society CME and Archives committees. She has also served on the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting Subcommittee, the Executive Committee of the Movement Disorder Section of the American Academy of Neurology and was chair of the Liaison Committee of the same Section. She is a member of the medical scientific boards of the SPSP, Inc, PSP Association for England and Europe and the Association for Frontotemporal Dementias.
Dr. Litvan is Co-Editor of Moving Along, the newsletter of the Movement Disorder Society since 2000 and she is an ad-hoc reviewer for several medical, neurologic and neuropsychologic journals. She received the NIH merit award for leading international multicenter studies to evaluate and improve the clinical diagnostic criteria of several dementia and parkinsonian neurodegenerative disorders. She is currently directing studies to identify the cause/s, search for biologic markers, and identify symptomatic and biologic therapies to slow the course of neurodegenerative parkinsonian disorders.
Andres Lozano, MD (Canada) obtained hid MD degree from the University of Ottawa and his PhD in Neurobiology from McGill University. He was appointed to the neurosurgical faculty at the University of Toronto in 1991 and became full Professor in 1999. He holds the RR Tasker Chair in Functional Neurosurgery and a Canada Research Chair in Neuroscience at the University of Toronto. Dr Lozano's research is focused on understanding the cellular pathogenesis and developing novel treatments, including surgical therapies, for neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease and dystonia.
Melanie Maar (Austria) is a professional contemporary dancer and choreographer. She is originally from Vienna, Austria where she started her career under the guidance of her mother, a professional Flamenco dancer and teacher. Ms Maar's father, Herbert Maar has been afflicted with Parkinson's disease for the past 25 years. In 2003 she created a dance inspired by the movements and inner states of the disease that was part of her life growing up. "On and Off" was premiered at the European Parkinson's Disease Association Congress in Lisbon, Portugal in 2003, where her father was part of the audience for the first time. Since then this piece has been presented in Oslo, Berlin and Vienna, to a variety of audiences, including Neurologists, patients, care takers as well as the New York art audience.
She continues to search for artistic expressions in connection with the body language of patients and how movement affects their lives and symptoms. Ms. Maar will perform this piece at the opening ceremony of the WPC in Washington, DC. She has been living and dancing in New York for the past nine years and is also a certified Yoga instructor and Thai Yoga Massage Therapist. Contact is welcome: mmaar@hotmail.com
Heather MacTavish (US) formed New Rhythms Foundation in 1998 to bring rhythmic programs to persons diagnosed with chronic, degenerative and developmental disabilities (which she now refers to as 'extraordinarabilities'.) Diagnosed with PD ten years ago, Heather is skilled in group dynamics and individual human behavior. She acts as a role model to others, combining creativity, science and art with spirit, acceptance and humor.
Heather has produced a powerful training video spanning a six-month program held at a long-term care facility in California, which documents rhythmic program methods and outcomes. She is nearing completion of a comprehensive resource guide and training manual illustrating the influences that music, movement, actions and attitudes can have on biophysical, social and emotional levels.
Heather's creative approach to the intertwining of songs, storytelling and percussive expression is cited in the newly released fourth edition of Burnside's Working with Older Adults. The chapter - Music and other Arts Activities in the lives of Older Adults, by Barry Bortnick, PhD, Program Director UCLA Ext Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning, cites the New Rhythms model of story~songs.
Heather's spirited story appears in The Healing Power of the Drum by Dr. Robert Lawrence Friedman. She has presented at conferences at the ASA, the Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities, the Central CA Therapeutic Recreation Association, and the Northern CA Council of Activities Coordinators. In addition to training workshops and mentoring programs, she has conducted classes and courses at the University of Innsbruck, the Orff Institute in Austria, CA State University, Fresno Gerontology Department and the World Centre for Creative Learning in India. Heather serves on the board of two Mercy Services, California senior and affordable housing properties, and has twice been awarded a Marin Arts Council grant.
Silvia Mandel, Ph.D. (Israel) obtained her PhD in endocrine pharmacology and post-doctoral training in genetic engineering and molecular biology from the Technion, Institute of Technology. She is currently the vice director of the NPF and the Eve Topf Centers of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases and a senior research fellow at the Dept. of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Technion. Her major areas of research are functional genomics and proteomics in neurodegeneration and expression profiling of novel neuroprotective drugs. She was the first to study the mechanism of MPTP induced dopaminergic neurotoxicity employing cDNA microarray gene expression and more recently, that of substantia nigra pars compacta of parkinsonian brains. She is a world expert on the neuroprotective and neurorecue activity of green tea polyphenol, EGCG and has published several major reviews on this topic. She received a number of prizes from Technion and recently was awarded the 16th International Congress of Parkinson's Disease Senior Researcher Award at the Congress in Berlin.
Demetrius M. Maraganore, MD (US) is a Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester , MN . His subspecialty is Movement Disorders. Dr. Maraganore's research focuses on the discovery of susceptibility genes for Parkinson's disease, and on the nomination and validation of molecular targets for disease modifying therapies using human genome approaches. He is the Principal Investigator of two NIH grants ("Molecular Epidemiology of Parkinson's Disease", ES10751; "Supplement-Molecular Epidemiology of PD", ES10751-S1) and of two Michael J. Fox Foundation Grants ("High-Resolution Whole Genome Study to Determine Genetic Loci of Parkinson's Disease", and "Global Genetics Consortium: Collaborative Pooled Analysis on the Association of the Alpha-synuclein Gene REP1 Variant and Parkinson's Disease"). He
Karen S. Marder, M.D. MPH (US) received her undergraduate degree from Cornell University and her medical degree from Weil Cornell Medical School. She completed her residency training in Neurology at the Neurological Institute and fellowship training in Behavioral Neurology with Dr. Richard Mayeux and the Neuroepidemiology with Dr. W. Allan Hauser at Columbia. A member of the Department of Neurology since 1989, Dr. Marder is the Sally Kerlin Professor of Neurology (in the Sergievsky Center, Taub Institute and Psychiatry) at the Columbia University Medical Center. In September 2002, she was appointed Head of the division of Aging and Dementia in the Department of Neurology. Dr. Marder's research interests span a range of neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, HIV dementia, and Alzheimer's disease. She is the principal investigator for an NIH-funded study of the genetic epidemiology of Parkinson's disease. A major area of interest has been the risk factors for and impact of dementia on the course of PD. Dr. Marder is a site principal investigator for a number of multi-center studies on Parkinson's disease and Huntington's disease. The Huntington's Disease Center she has directed since 1991 was designated a Huntington's Disease Society of America Center of Excellence in 1999. Since 1997, Dr. Marder has been one of four Associate Directors of the Irving Center for Clinical Research. She serves on the editorial board of Neurology.
Jill Marjama-Lyons, MD (US) is a board certified neurologist with fellowship training in Parkinson's disease. She was the former medical director of The Parkinson Center at the University of Florida and after returning to New Mexico she has served as regional director of PADRECC (Parkinson's Disease Research Clinic Center), director of the NPF New Mexico Outreach Parkinson Program serving the many hundreds of Navajo persons with PD and as medical director of the Health South Rehabilitation Parkinson Center and Deep Brain Stimulation Program in Albuquerque, NM. She has published many articles, given over 200 lectures, served on national advisory panels, and received awards for outstanding achievements in her field. She is interested in clinical research in traditional and alternative therapies for Parkinson's disease and is author of Warner books, "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Parkinson's Disease: A Holistic Program For Optimal Wellness.
Bala V. Manyam, MD (India) was born in Bangalore , India . With his love for botany, he initially attended an agricultural college but soon decided that Bangalore Medical College better suited his aptitude, and graduated in 1968. After moving to United States , he completed a Neurology Residency and Pharmacology Fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University , Philadelphia . Joining the same institution as a faculty, he established a Movement Disorders Clinic at the Wilmington Veteran's Medical Center , an affiliate of Thomas Jefferson Medical College and initiated research in Huntington's disease and Parkinson's disease. In 1884 he moved as associate professor at Southern University School of Medicine, Springfield and established a Movement Disorders Clinic. While at SIU, he visited several Ayurvedic centers in India and initiated an Ayurvedic drug development program for Parkinson's disease. This included both product development and a randomized, multi-center clinical trial in India . His work received one of the first funding from the newly established NIH's Office of Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. He also received considerable support from the Research and Development Department, Zandu Pharmaceutical Works, Mumbai , India and a grant from the Indo-US Program for Development of Commercial Technology. The resulting drug, HP200 for Parkinson's disease, received a patent in India and approval as an Investigational New Drug from US FDA. It is currently marketed in India under the name Zandopa. HP-200 contains Mucuna pruriens seed powder that contains levodopa and other unknown compounds (that he is researching at present).
Dr. Manyam moved to Scott & White Memorial Hospital and Clinic and Texas A&M University System Health Science Center College of Medicine in 1999 to accepted the Plummer endowed position as Professor to develop a basic science laboratory and clinical center for movement disorders. He continues in that position today. He is continuing his research in Ayurvedic drugs, which has now expanded into the study Ayurvedic drugs for Alzheimer's drugs (Bacopa monniera and Centella asiatica) and Trichopus zylanicus, a tribal drug for fatigue in aging and Parkinson's disease. An US and international patent is pending for his anti-parkinson drug that has symptomatic, neuroprotective and neurorestorative effect.
Dr. Manyam has authored more than 170 publications including book chapters in the area of movement disorders, Ayurveda, general neurology, and history of neurology. He was named one of the best doctors in America, listed in Who's Who in Frontier Science and Technology, Who's Who in Midwest, Who's Who in Science and Engineering and others. He was on the editorial board of Neuroepidemiology and currently on the editorial board of Phytotherapy Research. He has been a member of the NIH study section in the National Center for Complimenting Alternative Medicine and is currently a member of its National Advisory Council. He was elected to American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics and was an examiner for Ph. D. candidates in Pharmacology. He has delivered talks on various neurological subjects at several universities and conferences, both national and international. He has been a member of several national/international committees and was involved in founding the Association of Indian Neurologists in America, and American Association Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) Down State Illinois, of which he was also president. He was co-chairman of Integrated Medicine Committee of AAPI. AAPI has the second largest membership after American Medical Association. He was a member of the NIH/NCCAM delegation to Indo-US Forum held in New Delhi, India and an invited speaker at Cambridge University, England. He is married to Rani and has a daughter Shaila. His hobbies include art collection, history of medicine, creative writing travel and photography.
Laura Marsh, MD (US) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore , Maryland . She is an Attending Psychiatrist with the Geriatric Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry Division at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and also Director and Principal Investigator of the Clinical Research Program of the Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins.
Dr. Marsh received her undergraduate degree at Oberlin College in Oberlin , Ohio , and her medical degree at The Ohio State University College of Medicine in Columbus . She completed a residency in Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with additional training in Neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, England. Dr. Marsh completed fellowship training in Neuroimaging, Schizophrenia, and Neuropsychiatry research at the National Institute of Mental Health in Washington, DC, and at Stanford University School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California. She was am Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University before returning to Johns Hopkins in 1998.
Dr. Marsh's clinical and academic research interests focus on neuropsychiatry and she has specific expertise in the psychiatric aspects of Parkinson's disease. The emphasis of her research is on improving the characterization, detection, and treatment of PD-related psychiatric disturbances, which tend to be under-recognized and under-treated. Her current research studies include a community-based study aimed at improving the detection of depressive disturbances in PD, a longitudinal study of motor, cognitive, and psychiatric deficits and their inter-relations in patients with PD, and investigator-initiated clinical trials on the treatment of executive dysfunction and dementia in PD. She is also a site-investigator for a multi-site clinical trial on treatment of depression in PD. Dr. Marsh has a strong commitment to outreach and education and, to that end, lectures regularly at the local and national level to clinicians and lay individuals affected by PD. She has been published in over 60 publications and is the co-editor of a book, Psychiatric Issues in Parkinson's Disease - A Practical Guide, that will be published in Summer, 2005.
Jeffrey C. Martin, Esq. (US) is a lawyer with the firm of Goodwin Procter. He is Chairman of the Parkinson Action Network and a member of the National Advisory Council on Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Eliezer Masliah, MD (US) has held a joint appointment in Neurosciences and Pathology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) since 1992 and Director of Autopsy services at the UCSD Medical Center since 1995. He heads the Experimental Neuropathology Laboratory (ENL) engaged in the scientific pursuit of understanding the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to synaptic damage in neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and the dementia associated with AIDS. The laboratory continues to make progress in elucidating the mechanisms by which abnormal protein folding leads to neurodegeneration. This information has been used to develop new transgenic animal models that are currently being utilized for testing compounds that will ameliorate the neurodegenerative process by decreasing protein oligomerization. The main hypothesis is that during neurodegeneration there is an abnormal accumulation of synaptic proteins with amyloidogenic potential at the synaptic terminal and that these abnormally aggregated proteins become neurotoxic and interfere with synaptic function.
Presently, research efforts are directed toward understanding the mechanisms by which abnormal a-synuclein aggregation leads to neurodegeneration in AD and PD. Momentum for this research came as a result of the discovery by Polymeropolous et al of a mutation in this gene leading to familial PD. The Masliah laboratory has a long track record of investigating this molecule after cloning the human homologue of a-synuclein and observing that this molecule abnormally accumulates in the plaques and synapses of patients with AD and in the Lewy bodies of PD patients. The group is recognized for having developed the first transgenic mouse model as well as an in vitro model system suggesting that oxidative stress might play an important role by promoting abnormal aggregation of a-synuclein. Furthermore, the group has made two fundamentally new discoveries associated with the role of a-synuclein in the pathogenesis of neurodegeneration. Firstly, they found that Ab1-42 actually promotes a-synuclein aggregation. This is important because it explains why a large proportion of patients with AD develop Parkinsonism and why there is considerable overlap between AD and PD. Secondly, they found that for the first time an endogenous molecule with the capacity of binding a-synuclein and preventing or decreasing the neurotoxic conversion of this molecule. This molecule is a close homologue to a-synuclein and was named ß-synuclein. The laboratory has now been able to develop compounds mimicking ß-synuclein as well as viral vectors expressing this gene and have been testing them in models of AD and PD in an effort to develop novel gene therapies for these disorders. These studies have now been extended to identify other factors promoting and preventing a-synuclein aggregation along a pathogenic spectrum extending from oligomerization (protofibril) formation to polymerization (fibril formation). These pathways have been found to converge on the JNK-JIP1 signaling pathway, triggering or blocking neurodegeneration. These studies have been described in numerous articles published in Nature, Science, PNAS, Neuron, and the J of Neuroscience. The work of the Masliah group has generated interest from both the neuroscience community and the pharmaceutical industry. Research activities are supported through substantial federal funding as well as through several non-profit organizations.
In addition, the laboratory continues to make strides in studies relating to the mechanisms by which the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) might trigger neurodegeneration and cognitive impairment. Specifically, efforts are focused on understanding the role of HIV-related receptors in mediating neurodegeneration. The group found that FGF1 is capable of preventing the toxic effects of HIV proteins by modulating the expression of HIV related receptors and blocking the GSK3b pathway via Akt activation. They have been able to develop new experimental tg models and identified compounds that block the GSK3b pathway and decrease the HIV neurotoxicity.
Patrick L. Mcgeer, OC, MD, PhD, FRSC, FRCP(C) (Canada) was born in Vancouver, B.C. in 1927. He received his B.A. in chemistry from the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1948, and his PhD in Physical Chemistry from Princeton University in 1951. After spending three years as an industrial researcher with DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware, he returned to UBC, completing his MD in 1958 and his interneship in the Vancouver General Hospital in 1959. He was immediately recruited for the Faculty of Medicine at UBC where he has remained since, currently as a Professor Emeritus.
Dr. McGeer is an Officer of the Order of Canada. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal College of Physicians of Canada, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. At the Ninth International Alzheimer's Disease Congress in 2004, Dr. Patrick McGeer was awarded the prestigious Henry Wisniewski prize given to the top Alzheimer Disease researcher. He was recognized by the Institute of Scientific Information in the United States as one of the world's 100 most cited neuroscientists. Only three other Canadians, his wife Dr. Edith McGeer, and two coworkers from the McGeer Laboratory were recognized in this top 0.25% of cited neuroscientists.
He has repeatedly served on scientific review panels for the NIH and on advisory boards for the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and the Canadian Societies for Parkinson's disease, ALS and Multiple Sclerosis. He is a member of the policy advisory committee for the National Neurological Specimen Bank located in Los Angeles. He serves on 5 editorial boards of international neuroscience journals. Over the years he has given many invited lectures, beginning as a National Sigma Xi lecturer in 1963 and 6 years as a Grass Traveling Scientist.
For many years, Dr. McGeer had a dual life as a brain researcher and a member of the British Columbia Provincial Cabinet. He served as an elected member of the B.C. Provincial Legislature from 1962-1986 and as a Minister of the Crown from 1976-1986. As a Cabinet Minister, Dr. McGeer introduced many scientific and educational innovations in B.C. In recognition of the contributions he made to the development of high technology industry, he was chosen as British Columbia's Businessman of the Year by the Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1982. While serving in the B.C. Cabinet, Dr. McGeer was officially on leave of absence from UBC but continued to work evenings and weekends in the laboratory. His scientific productivity during that period is attested to by publication of over 150 scientific papers and the first edition of the book "Molecular Neurobiology of the Mammalian Brain” which he coauthored with the Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles and his wife Edith McGeer.
Dr. McGeer has always been interested in sports and played basketball for Canada on the Olympic team of 1948. The UBC team he played for defeated the Harlem Globe Trotters and is in the Sports Halls of Fame of the Province of British Columbia and the University of British Columbia. Dr. McGeer is also an individual athlete in the UBC Sports Hall of Fame. He now skis and plays tennis very actively. Other interests are in astronomy and marine life. He was a member of the scientific expedition from the Vancouver Public Aquarium that captured the first killer whale and went twice to the high Artic on whale expeditions. He was for many years a director of the Aquarium and is now a life member of both the B.C. Planetarium and Vancouver Public Aquarium Societies.
He met his wife, Edith Graef McGeer, while working at the duPont Company in Wilmington, Delaware. She obtained her PhD at the age of 22. While working for duPont, she received a special citation from the American Chemical Society for outstanding scientific contributions. She has been working with her husband in the field of neuroscience since 1954. She is presently on the editorial boards of Brain Research, Neuroscience Letters, Neurobiology of Aging, Alzheimer's Disease and Associated Disorders, and Experimental Neurology. The Doctors McGeer jointly received the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry Prize in 1992 and, in 1995, a special award for lifetime achievement from the Science Council of British Columbia. They were jointly appointed Officers of the Order of Canada in 1995 and received honorary Doctors of Science degrees from UBC in 2000. They were jointly inducted as Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002. Together, the McGeers have produced more than 500 scientific publications. The McGeers have also produced three younger PhDs: Rick (born 1957), a computer scientist, Tad (born 1958), an aeronautical engineer, and Tori (born 1960), a philosopher.
Their present scientific interest is largely on the role of the immune system in neurodegenerative diseases, with particular emphasis on Alzheimer's disease.
Ronald McKay, PhD (US) is chief of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He previously held positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. He has made contributions to the fields of molecular biology and neuroscience. His recent work has focused on the stem cells of the nervous system. In a 1988 paper, he provided the first clear proof that these precursors could be identified. His subsequent studies have generated a series of important insights into the properties of stem cells in the developing and adult nervous systems. His group is particularly focused on developing new technologies to understand the development, function and survival of neurons. McKay's work has also influenced strategies for cell- and gene-based therapies for central nervous system disease. The work of his group at the NIH has led the interest in new stem cell based approaches to degenerative diseases of the nervous system. The pioneering quality of this work is recognized around the world and McKay is the 2004 recipient of the Schering Foundation Prize in Biology.
Kevin St. P. McNaught, PhD (UK) received his Bachelor of Science degree with honors (BSc) in the field of Pharmacology in 1992 from King's College London, University of London (UK). He then received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Pharmacology in 1996 at the same institution. Here, under the supervision of Professor Peter Jenner, Dr McNaught studied the possible involvement of neurotoxins in the development of Parkinson's disease. While at King's College London, Dr McNaught was awarded the Sir Henry Wellcome Commemorative Award for Innovative Research. Dr McNaught moved to the Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge (UK), where he performed post-doctoral studies. Here, he examined the cellular and biochemical mechanisms involved in the neurodegenerative process in Parkinson's disease.
In 2000, Dr McNaught moved to the Center for Neuroregeneration Research at Harvard Medical School/McLean Hospital (MA, USA) where, as an Instructor, he conducted research into the application of cellular transplantation as a treatment for Parkinson's disease. In 2001, Dr McNaught accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Neurology in the Department of Neurology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York, USA).
Dr McNaught is currently investigating the role of the ubiquitin-proteasome system in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. This involves studying postmortem brain tissues from patients for evidence of proteasomal changes and exploring the relevance of these defects using both in vitro and in vivo model systems. Dr McNaught is also studying the possibility that exposure to environmental proteasome inhibitors plays a role in the development of some forms of Parkinson's disease.
Dr McNaught has published numerous peer-reviewed research papers, review articles and book chapters in his field of research. He is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Neurochemistry , International Review of Neurobiology and Synapse .
Suzanne Mintz, MS (US) is the president and co-founder of the National Family Caregivers Association (NFCA). She received her BA in English from Queens College, City University of New York and her MS in Human Ecology from the University of Maryland. She is also a graduate of the 1996 class of Leadership Washington.Her longtime personal involvement with caregiving (her husband was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1974) led her to the conclusion that chronic illness and disability affects the person who provides care as well as the one that requires it. In addition its impact goes beyond individual families and is a national healthcare and social policy issue.
NFCA is an 11-year old grassroots organization that educates, supports, empowers, and speaks up for our nation's more than 50 million family caregivers. NFCA addresses the common concerns of all family caregivers regardless of age, relationship, or their loved one's diagnosis.
One of the first to champion the now widely held belief that caregiving is a life span issue, Ms. Mintz soon became recognized as a far-sighted and responsible spokesperson for family caregivers, as attested to by her appearances before Congress, her participation in the crafting of national legislation, and often sited remarks in major media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Chicago Tribune. Many of her efforts are focused on empowering other caregivers to speak up on behalf of their loved ones and themselves. Her efforts have inspired others to become advocates and activists on caregiving issues.
Ms. Mintz is the author of Love, Honor, & Value - A Family Caregiver Speaks Out About the Choices and Challenges of Caregiving, (Capital Books 2002) has been writing a quarterly column, Caregiver Connection, for Paraplegic News since 1996 and is often called upon to contribute to other publications. Many of her writings have been reprinted by other organizations across the country.
Ms. Mintz currently serves, on a number of national advisory committees and boards related to family caregiving. She is a member of the board of National Patient Safety Foundation and a founding advisor of CAPS (Consumers Advocating for Patient Safety). In addition she is a member of the Paralysis Task Force of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center, and the SOS RX public education initiative on medication safety.
Ms Mintz was recently honored with the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Welcome Back Award from Eli Lilly. This award is given to an individual who has suffered from depression, spoken out publicly about the disease and gone on to make significant contributions to the community.
Yoshikuni Mizuno, MD (Japan) is the Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at Jutendo University in Tokyo, Japan. Dr. Mizuno received his MD degree from the University of Tokyo School of Medicine in 1965. Dr. Mizuno completed his residency training at the Department of Neurology, Northwestern University Medical Center, Chicago, USA. He returned to Japan as Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Jichi Medical School, Tochigi in 1973 and was appointed Professor of Neurology at the Juntendo University School of Medicine in 1989. Dr. Mizuno has published more than 200 original articles on Parkinson's disease and related disorders and is particularly interested in the etiology and pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. His research led to the discovery of the Parkin gene. Dr. Mizuno is on the Editorial Board of international journals including Movement Disorders, Parkinsonism and Related Disorders, and Journal of Neural Transmission.
Erwin B. Montgomery Jr., MD (US) is a Professor in the Department of Neurology and an Affiliate Scientist at the National Primate Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is Director of the Movement Disorders Program in the Department of Neurology. His primary interest is in motor neurophysiology of the basal ganglia-thalamic-cortical system and in the neuronal pathophysiology of Parkinson's disease. Recently, he has been studying the mechanisms of action of deep brain stimulation in human and non-human primates, both to improve treatment of patients with movement disorders and as a probe to understand the dynamics of the basal ganglia-thalamic-cortical system.
Dr. Montgomery's interest in motor physiology started as a medical student at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York in the laboratory of Sir John Eccles and under the supervision of Dr. Gary Allen. Dr. Montgomery went on to complete his residency in neurology at Washington University in St. Louis and remained there to do his fellowship in motor neurophysiology and movement disorders and then as assistant professor before going to the University of Arizona as an associate professor. At the University of Arizona, Dr. Montgomery was a member of the Motor Control program, a NIH funded pre- and post-doctoral training program. He subsequently went to the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and its Lerner Research Foundation to establish their clinical and research program in deep brain stimulation. In 2003, Dr. Montgomery joined the facility of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Dr. Montgomery has authored over 60 papers published in peer reviewed journal on topics ranging from non-human primate neurophysiology, to human studies of motor control, to mathematical analysis of neuronal activity and computer simulation studies. He has received numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Parkinson Disease Association.
Orna Moore, RN (Israel) has been a registered nurse since 1979. She graduated from Tel-Aviv University, Department of Nursing, School of Health Professions, Sackler Faculty of Medicine in Israel.
Since 1997, she has been the Head Nurse and Coordinator of the Movement Disorders (MDS) Unit in Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, Israel. As a Clinical Nurse Specialist she is involved in direct contact with patients throughout the course of the disease from diagnosis to palliative care. giving advice and information to patients and family relatives on a routine or emergency basis. She coordinates and manages the multidisciplinary team in the MDS unit and works closely with the team members. She manages a unique clinic for Parkinson's disease (PD) caregivers in the MDS Unit, focusing in the special needs of family members of PD patients. Support groups' leader for PD patients and others MDS patients and their family members. Teacher and lecture at academic Nursing Schools and in post-graduated nursing programs, in Israel.
She is the initiator and Chair of the Neurology Nursing Forum in Israel and a member in the European Parkinson's Nurses Network (EPNN) Committee. Research PD patients' Quality of Life. Volunteer in the Israeli Parkinson's Association.
Micaela Morelli, PhD (Italy) has been a Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Cagliari, Italy since 1990. She has a more than 20 years experience in research on centrally active drugs. H er research group has produced pioneristic studies demonstrating that blockade of A2A receptors play a positive role in the symptomatic treatment of Parkinson's disease. Prof . Morelli is councilor of the Italian Neuroscience Society and of International Basal Ganglia Society and is the Italian representative of the IBRO.
David Morley (UK) is a research psychologist at the Institute of Neurology, University College London. His main interests lie in developmental and health psychology as well as the measurement of quality of life, particularly in children. David's recent research has investigated the impact on adolescent and adult children of having a parent with both chronic and acute illness. In addition to this he and colleagues have been developing a tool designed specifically to measure the impact of parental illness, the Parental Illness Impact Scale.
Meg Morris, PhD (Australia) is Professor of Allied Health Clinical Research at Kingston Centre, Cheltenham, Victoria. She is a world expert in physiotherapy management of idiopathic Parkinson’s disease and has written several books on this topic, as well as a recent text on optimizing exercises and physical activity in older people. She has published more than 100 articles in refereed journals. Recently along with her colleagues Professor Graham, Pandy, Iansek and Baker, she received a $2 million NHMRC Grant to establish a clinical centre of research excellence in clinical gait analysis and gait rehabilitation. She supervises doctoral and postdoctoral students in allied health and is now working on gait and postural control in Parkinson’s disease, as well as several therapy outcome studies.
Maria H Nilsson, RPT, MSc (Sweden) is a Ph.D.student at the Department of Health Sciences, Division of Physiotherapy, Lund University , Sweden . Ms. Nilsson has been the Physical Therapist in the Movement Disorder Team at the Department of Neurosurgery, Lund University Hospital in Sweden since 1996. Her research projects concern balance performance, falls and fear of falling in severe PD. Supervisors are: Asst. Prof. Stig Rehncrona (Department of Neurosurgery) and Asst.. Prof. G-B. Jarnlo (Division of Physiotherapy, specialized in falls among elderly). The main focus of her studies is to evaluate if Deep Brain Stimulation has an effect on balance performance. She is also involved in teaching at the Department of Physical Therapy, Lund University.
Paul David Nussbaum, PhD (US) is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist in the state of Pennsylvania. Having earned his Doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Arizona in 1991, Dr. Nussbaum completed his internship and Post-Doctoral fellowship at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is an adjunct Associate Professor in Neurological Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
Doctor Nussbaum has over 17 years experience in the care of older persons suffering dementia and related disorders. From the outpatient setting to the long- term care setting, Dr. Nussbaum has worked in all sectors of the continuum of care. An expert in neuroanatomy and human behavior, Dr. Nussbaum has published over 50 peer reviewed articles, books, and chapters within the scientific community. He is a national and international lecturer on aging, dementia and related disorders, and health promotion.
Doctor Nussbaum presently focuses on health and wellness across the lifespan. His work details the lifestyle necessary to maximize successful aging, brain health, and disease prevention. Much of his writing and speaking is geared to the non-academic with a clear intention of educating the general public about the aging process.
With a home base and private practice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Dr. Nussbaum communicates daily with persons across the planet. He is available for email and telephone consultation and he frequently travels across the nation providing workshops and organizational consultation. For more information about Dr. Nussbaum, his work including his new book Brain Health and Wellness, other works, or to discuss your personal and, or organizational needs, access his website www.paulnussbaum.com.
John Nutt, MD (US) earned his degree at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He completed his internship at OHSU and his residency at the University of Washington Medical School. Nutt joined OHSU's faculty in 1978 as assistant professor of neurology and pharmacology. He is currently director of the Parkinson Center of Oregon.
Nutt has studied Parkinson's disease for nearly three decades. He is an active speaker at neurological conferences and has been widely published. Nutt is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and has been cited in The Best Doctors in America for five consecutive years. He received the Benign Essential Blepharospasm Research Hall of Fame award in 1994 and the Sociedad Espanola de Neurologia Cotzias Award in 1995.
José A Obeso, MD (Spain) is Professor of Neurology at the University of Navarra Medical School and Clinical University in Pamplona , Spain . He graduated from the University of Navarra in 1976, and trained in neurology and neurophysiology in San Sebastian and Pamplona . From 1980 to 1982, he worked as research fellow in movement disorders alongside Professor David Marsden in London , UK . At the University of Navarra , and for a short period in Tenerife , Dr Obeso specialised in clinical and laboratory research into the care of patients with movement disorders, with a particular interest in defining the abnormalities elicited by dopamine depletion in animal models of Parkinson's disease. He contributed largely to develop the concept of ‘continuous dopaminergic stimulation' for Parkinson's disease, and has played a significant role in the recent revitalisation of surgical treatments for the disease. He has published more than 150 original papers and 65 reviews in peer-reviewed journals, and has contributed to about 100 book chapters, mainly on the pathophysiology and treatment of dyskinesias and Parkinson's disease.
C. Warren Olanow, MD (US) is the Henry P. and Georgette Goldschmidt Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City and Chief of the Neurology Service at the Mount Sinai Hospital. He received his medical degree from the University of Toronto, performed his neurology training at the New York Neurological Institute at Columbia University, and did post-graduate studies in neuroanatomy at Columbia University. He served on the faculties of McGill University, Duke University, and the University of South Florida prior to assuming his present position. Dr. Olanow has authored more than 300 publications primarily related to Parkinson's disease and neurodegeneration. He is currently President of the Movement Disorder Society and Treasurer of the American Neurological Association.
Daniel Perry (US)is the Executive Director of the not-for-profit Alliance for Aging Research in Washington, D.C. Mr. Perry's organization is the nation's leading citizen advocacy organization for promoting a broad agenda of medical and behavioral research to improve the health and independence of older Americans.
Mr. Perry's background spans a wide range of health policy, governmental, political and journalistic experience. Mr. Perry held staff positions for more than a dozen years on Capitol Hill, including special assistant to the Majority Whip of the U.S. Senate. He was appointed by Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan during the first Bush Administration to the Federal Task Force on Aging Research. He was also named by President Clinton to the Advisory Board of the White House Conference on Aging. As part of the influential Jackson Hole Group on healthcare issues, Mr. Perry helped establish the groundwork for the Foundation for Accountability, or FACCT, and served as Chairman of the FACCT Board of Directors. Mr. Perry was selected to represent consumer interests on the first governing body of the American Medical Accreditation Program (AMAP), assessing credentials and performance of U.S. physicians.
Mr. Perry is the current President of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research (CAMR), leading over 90 advocacy organizations in the fight to advance stem cell research. He is also a Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Immunology and Geriatric Medicine in Washington, D.C., and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Mr. Perry is a frequent speaker on aging research and public policy topics before business, academic, and public sector audiences, and is widely published on these subjects. As a journalist he was the recipient of many awards and citations, including a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize.
Leonard Petrucelli, PhD (US) received his PhD in molecular cellular biochemistry from the Loyola University School of Medicine of Chicago in 2000. As a graduate student in Dr. Benjamin Wolozin's laboratory, he investigated the structure and function of alphasynuclein. Subsequently, Dr. Petrucelli joined Dr. John Hardy's laboratory at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine to study the molecular basis of Parkinson's disease. In 2002, Dr. Petrucelli was appointed and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic. His laboratory's primary research interests are in the function and regulation of synuclein and tau proteins, the role of the ubiquitin proteasome system in protein regulation, and the development of approaches to manipulate specific components of the ubiquitin system as a basis for therapeutics. He has developed an in vivo model, which can directly correlate proteasome activity to genetic and/or environmental factors associated in Parkinson's disease.
Ronald Pfeiffer, MD (USA) was born in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1947. At the age of six his family moved to Seward, Nebraska, where his father assumed a faculty position at Concordia College. Dr. Pfeiffer attended Concordia High School in Seward and received a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln in 1969, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors. He attended medical school at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, graduating in 1973. Internship and neurology residency training were subsequently completed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After three additional years of military service in Germany, Dr. Pfeiffer returned to Nebraska, where he joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the Department of Neurology in 1980. In 1994, Dr. Pfeiffer assumed a position at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, where he is now Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Neurology.
Dr. Pfeiffer's area of specialization and research is Parkinson's disease. He has extensive experience in clinical trials of experimental medications for the treatment of Parkinson's disease and has a particular interest in gastrointestinal dysfunction in Parkinson's disease. Dr. Pfeiffer has been author or co-author of approximately 190 journal articles or book chapters and is co-editor of three books.
Dr. Pfeiffer is a member of the Parkinson Study Group. He is the current chairman of the Continuing Medical Education Committee of the Movement Disorder Society and a member of the Research Committee on Parkinsonism and Related Disorders of the World Federation of Neurology. Dr. Pfeiffer received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Concordia University, Nebraska in 2001 and is currently a member of their Board of Regents as well as the Board of Directors of the Concordia University Foundation. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of Wheat Ridge Ministries.
Sandra J. Fulton Picot, PhD, RN, FAAN (USA) is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore Maryland. Her research interests are in studying and ameliorating the negative biopsychosocial responses and spiritual distress of family caregivers of disabled older adults. Over the last 15 years, she has received more than 2 million dollars in research funds from National Institutes of Health and other sources to study especially the cardiovascular and neuroendocrine responses of African American caregivers.
Dr. Picot is especially sought after by medical and pharmaceutical entities to advise them on the integration of culture into the entire research process and train future researchers. Most recently, she collaborated with Eisai and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and the National Medical Association on a clinical trial of Aricept in community-dwelling African American older adults. Recognized by her peers, she was selected for induction into the prestigious American Academy of Nurses and co-chair of the Research and Scholarship Advisory Council of Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing.
Zvezdan Pirtosek, MD (Slovenia) is the Head of the Centre for Extrapyramidal Disorders at the University Clinical Centre of Ljubljana and Associate Professor in Neurology at the Ljubljana Medical and Psychology Faculty, Slovenia. Following his clinical training in Clinical Neurology he continued his postgraduate training in movement disorders at the National Hospital for Neurology Queen Square London (1987 – 1993). He formed Slovenian Society for Parkinson's Disease and is an active member of the Medical Board of EPDA (European Parkinson's Disease Association). He participates in teaching courses of the EFNS (European Federation of Neurological Societies) and is a founding member of the Alpine Basal Ganglia Club. Currently he is the Chairman of the scientific committee of the Slovenian Parkinson Association. Dr. Pirtosek's research has focused on the fields of cognitive neurology, cognitive neurophysiology and movement disorders.
Werner Poewe, MD (Austria) is a Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Department of Neurology at Innsbruck Medical University in Innsbruck, Austria.
He held a Residency in Clinical Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Innsbruck, Austria from 1977 to 1984. Following this position, Professor Poewe was a British Council Research Fellow at University College and Middlesex Hospital Medical School, London. From 1986-1989, he was a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Neurology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. This position was directly followed by four years where he served as Professor of Neurology and Acting Director of the Department of Neurology at the Virchow Hospital of the Free University of Berlin.
His main research interests are in the field of movement disorders with particular emphasis on the clinical pharmacology of Parkinson's disease and dystonia. He served as President of the International Movement Disorder Society from 2000 trough 2002, as President of the Austrian Society of Neurology from 2002 to 2004 and is the current President of the Austrian PD Society.
Serge Przedborski, MD, PhD (US) is a Professor of Neurology and Pathology and on the faculty of the Center for Neurobiology and Behavior at Columbia University. He has dedicated his research efforts to elucidating the mechanisms by which neurons die in experimental animal models of neurodegenerative disorders, especially Parkinson's disease (PD). His laboratory proposes that the demise of neurons in PD results not from the action of a single deleterious factor, but rather from the concerted effects of multiple noxious events. Most significantly, these events include energy crisis and oxidative stress, and, while responsible for the death of some neurons, these perturbations are actually responsible for the activation of other intracellular molecular pathways such as Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), and apoptosis. Only then, under the effects of these true cell executioners, are the neurons dying. In addition, studies emanating from his laboratory suggest that while the neurodegenerative process evolves in PD, indices (including the activation of pro-inflammatory enzymes such as inducible nitric oxide synthase, NADPH-oxidase, and myeloperoxidase) of neuroinflammation develop. His laboratory has demonstrated that these activations do increase the amount of stress to which the neighboring compromised neurons are subjected, thereby promoting their demise. This important fact was demonstrated by blocking the activation of neuroinflammation, by blocking specific neuroinflammatory mediators, and by using vaccination strategies to modify the behavior of neuroinflammatory cells from being deleterious to being beneficial. This complex cascade of cellular and molecular events integrates many of the main discoveries accomplished over the past two decades and offers a host of appealing targets for the development of effective neuroprotective therapies for PD.
Jennie Posen, MSW (Israel) received her Masters degree in Social Work from Tel Aviv University, Israel in 1981. She has certification in social work in health care (1997), multi-disciplinary group work with patients, families and staff (1998) and social work leadership (2000). She is co-author of professional articles on group work with persons with Parkinson's disease as well as co –author of articles on social work, clinical and organizational issues in health care. Ms Posen is a senior social worker at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center and works in the Movement Disorders Unit with persons with Parkinson's disease and their families.
Her treatment interventions in the unit entail short term individual, couple and family counseling and support in order to help in reorganization and adaptation to the disease. The individual interventions emphasize coping skills, and focus on perception of illness, inherent losses, giving and receiving help from social networks and institutions and maintaining and returning to social roles. The family treatment approach concentrates on helping the family reorganize the family's everyday life as a result of Parkinson's disease. Ms Posen co-leads psycho-educational groups with the MDU's coordinator nurse and task oriented group work with the unit's speech therapist. She is part of the MDU team that also conducts workshops and group interventions in the community with people with Parkinson's disease, their families and professional carers in collaboration with the Israel Parkinson Association
Kimberly A. Quaid, PhD (US) is a Professor of Clinical Medical and Molecular Genetics, Clinical Psychiatry and Clinical Medicine at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She is the Director of the Predictive Testing Program, Director of the Center of Excellence in Huntington Disease, Co-Director of the Masters Program in Genetic Counseling and a Core Faculty member of the Indiana University Center for Bioethics. She is also an active member of the Huntington Study Group (HSG), an organization of physicians and health care professionals dedicated to improving treatments for Huntington disease. In that capacity she is a member of the Executive Committee of the HSG and well as Chair of the Bioethics Advisory Committee. Dr. Quaid has written over 50 books, book chapter, articles and abstracts and has served as a reviewer for numerous journals including the Journal of Genetic Counseling, Health Psychology, Journal of the American Medical Association, American Journal of Medical Genetics, American Journal of Human Genetics and the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics. She is also a member of the study section of the Ethical, Legal and Social Implications Program of the National Center for Human Genome Research.
Her research interests include observational trials in Huntington Disease and the clinical and psychological outcomes of genetic testing. She is currently a Co-Investigator and Site Investigator for an observational trial of 1001 individuals at risk for Huntington Disease who have chosen not to be tested for the presence or absence of the HD mutation called Prospective Huntington At Risk Observational Study (PHAROS) as well as Site Investigator for an observational trial of 625 individuals who have chosen to be tested known as Neurobiological Predictors of HD (PREDICT-HD). She is also a Co-investigator for a study on adolescents at high risk for bipolar disorder. She recently completed an in depth qualitative study of a subset of the PHAROS cohort.
Maryka Quik, PhD (US) received her doctoral degree in Biochemistry from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. This was followed by postdoctoral studies with Leslie Iversen at Cambridge University in England on a Medical Research Council fellowship. She subsequently joined the faculty in the Department of Pharmacology at McGill University as assistant professor where she continued her career in research and teaching as a full professor. Dr. Quik did a sabbatical during this period at Baylor Medical College Houston Texas, on a Medical Research Council Visiting Professorship. In 1996, she joined the Parkinson's Institute where she continued her research as a senior research scientist. Her work focuses on the role of nicotinic receptors in Parkinson’s disease. The rationale for these studies stems from evidence showing that nicotine increases CNS dopamine activity and protects against nigrostriatal degeneration. In addition, epidemiological findings demonstrate a decreased incidence of Parkinson’s disease in smokers. Dr. Quik’s laboratory is performing experiments to identify the different nicotinic receptors in CNS regions linked to Parkinson’s disease and investigating neuroprotective effects of nicotine. These studies may lead to the development of nicotinic drugs for Parkinson’s disease therapy.
Rémi Quirion, MD (Canada) is a McGill University Full Professor and Scientific Director at the Douglas Hospital Research Centre (a McGill affiliated teaching hospital). Under his leadership, the Douglas Hospital Research Centre became a premier research facility in Canada in the fields of neurosciences and mental health. Dr Quirion promoted the development of neurosciences and clinical research in Neurology and Psychiatry as well as social and evaluation aspects of research in mental health and addiction. His research interests include: a) understanding the relationships between key phenotypes of the Alzheimer's brain and b) molecular and pharmacological features of neuropeptide receptors focusing on NPY and CGRP, and their role in memory, pain and drug dependence, and in animal models of schizophrenia. A major interest lies in the training of the next generation of scientists. In addition to being on the Advisory Board of over 15 scientific journals in Psychiatry, Pharmacology, and Neurosciences, Dr. Quirion has published 5 books and more than 500 scientific papers and articles.
Dr. Quirion is the inaugural Scientific Director of the Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction, one of the 13 virtual institutes of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research created in 2000 (www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/inmha). Moreover, Dr. Quirion is one of the most highly cited neuroscientists in the world, in addition to being Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a "Chevalier" of the "Ordre national du Québec". He also received in 2003 the Médaille de l'Assemblée nationale du Québec" and the "2003 First Annual Award – National Mental Health Champion (Research)". In 2004 he received the "Wilder-Penfield Award, Prix du Québec", the highest distinction in Biomedical Research in Quebec, as well as a Heinz-Lehmann Award from the Douglas Hospital Foundation, and the Dr. Mary V. Seeman Award from the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation.
Olivier Rascol, MD PhD (France) is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology in Toulouse University Hospital since 1993. He obtained his MD in Neurology (Toulouse, 1985) and his PhD in Neurosciences (Paris, 1992). Dr Rascol is running the Toulouse Clinical Research Centre since 1994 and the Toulouse European Space Clinic since 1998. He is also running a Research Group on Motricity in the Research Unit INSERM U455.
As a neuropharmacologist, Dr Rascol's main fields of interest are Parkinson's disease and movement disorders, drug development for Parkinson's disease and functional neuroimaging. Dr Rascol is currently running several research programs on neuroprotection, dopamine agonists, dyskinesia and non-dopaminergic antiparkinsonian medications in collaboration with several research centres in the US and in Europe. He is acting in this field as an external advisor for french and european scientific organisations, patients' associations, drug agencies and international pharmaceutical companies.
Dr Rascol is member of several french and american neurological and pharmacological societies. He is the secretary of the European Section of the Movement Disorders Society. He is and a member of the International Executive Committee of the Movement Disorders Society and a member of the WFN Research Committee on Parkinsonism and Related Disorders. Dr Rascol is working as associate-editor for the Journal Fundamental and Clinical Pharmacology and is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Neurology and of the Journal of Neural Transmission.
Dr Rascol has published more than 200 articles in International Scientific journals. He has also been invited to give more than 100 lectures in various European, North and South American and Asian universities or national and international meetings.
Avinoam Reches M.D. (Israel) is a board certified neurologist in Israel with special interest in movement disorders. An incumbent of Fulbright and Fogarty scholarships (1980-1982) who trained as a fellow with Dr. Fahn at the Neurological Institute, Columbia University in New York, City, USA. At the present time Dr. Reches works at Haddasah Hospital - The Hebrew University, Jerusalem Israel. Dr. Reches is the chairman of the Israel Neurological Association and the head of the Ethics Committee of the Israel Medical Association.
Irene Hegeman Richard, MD (US) received her B.S. in Biology from Cornell University in 1987 and her M.D. from the Yale University School of Medicine in 1991. She completed neurology residency and fellowship training in Movement Disorders and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Rochester in 1997. She developed clinical expertise in Parkinson's disease (PD) and other movement disorders. She evaluates and treats patients in the Movement Disorders Clinic where she oversees medical students, residents and fellows. She directs a neuropsychiatry course for psychiatry residents.
Dr. Richard's research focuses on the clinical aspects of psychiatric disturbances in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and other related neurological movement disorders.
Her clinical trial experience has facilitated collaborations with neurologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychologists throughout the U.S. and Canada. These collaborations will continue in the context of her recently awarded RO-1 grant from NIH (NINDS). Dr. Richard is the principal investigator for a multicenter, placebo-controlled clinical trial designed to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of antidepressant medication in patients with PD. Dr. Richard has also been studying mood and anxiety fluctuations in PD. Her efforts have brought new clinical and research attention to this previously overlooked clinical problem. Her preliminary work led to granting of a career development award from NIH (NINDS) enabling her to further study the phenomenology, causes and treatment of mood fluctuations in PD. The possibility that mood fluctuations in PD may represent a disease model for primary recurrent mood disorders (e.g. bipolar disorder) was the basis for a Young Investigator Award from the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression (NARSAD). She is collaborating with investigators from NIDA and another academic institution to learn about how variations in genes and their products (e.g. COMT allelic variation) may distinguish between PD patients with and without mood fluctuations.
Beate Ritz, MD, Ph.D. (USA) is an Associate Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at the UCLA School of Public Health and the Department of Neurology UCLA School of Medicine. She co-directs the NIEHS-funded CCPDER center at UCLA: "Center for Gene-Environment Studies of Parkinson's disease". Her primary research interests are the effects of occupational and environmental toxins such as pesticides, ionizing radiation, and air pollution on chronic diseases including neurodegenerative disorders (Parkinson's disease), cancers, and adverse birth outcomes. She currently investigates whether and how genetic influences and long-term exposures to pesticides may affect the risk of Parkinson's disease in residents of the Central Valley in California.
G. Webster Ross, MD (US) is a board certified neurologist with fellowship training in Behavioral Neurology. He is currently a staff neurologist and Research and Development Coordinator at the Veteran Affairs Pacific Islands Health Care System in Honolulu, Hawaii as well as Clinical Professor in the departments of Medicine and Geriatrics at the University of Hawaii John A. Burns School of Medicine. Dr. Ross' research interests are focused on environmental determinants of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and vascular dementia within the Honolulu Heart Program / Honolulu-Asia Aging Study. This longitudinal study began in 1965 with a cohort of 8006 Japanese-American men, born 1900-1919 who were living on the island of Oahu.
Lucy Roucis (USA) is a native of Denver, Colorado. She graduated Magna cum Laude from Denver's Loretto Heights College with a B.A. in Theatre and headed for Los Angeles. She soon found work modeling fashion and commercial print, acting in TV commercials, area theatre, soaps ("General Hospital", "Santa Barbara"), sitcoms ("Domestic Life" with Martin Mull), film ("Better Off Dead," "The Party Animal") and worked in the L.A. based company of the "Radio City Music Hall's Rockettes" at the Shrine Auditorium. Slowly but surely, she was making her career happen. And slowly but surely, the signs of Parkinson's disease began to manifest at age 27.
In search of other causes for the Parkinson's symptoms, Lucy was found to have thyroid cancer and had it successfully removed. Soon after, Dr. J. William Langston confirmed the diagnosis of young-onset Parkinson's disease. Lucy acted in the feature film "That Night" with Juliet Lewis in Baltimore and then relocated back to Denver, feeling her career might soon be over.
Lucy joined PHAMALy, an acting troupe comprised of actors with disabilities. They perform a musical every year at the renowned Space Theatre at the Denver Center for Performing Arts. Well-known for her performances with PHAMALy, Lucy has been nominated by the Denver critics five times, winning Best Supporting Actress in a Musical as Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls" by Westword Magazine in 2005. She was a correspondent for a Washington, D.C. pilot for television, "One Step Ahead," a news show for the disability community. She wrote PHAMALy's latest touring outreach show, "Smile and Say Hello." She tours with the production, teaches acting to children and coaches acting privately. She also fancies herself a poet.
Stand-up comedy is Lucy's latest form of creative expression and she incorporates it with public and motivational speaking. She emcees for many events. Nineteen years down the road from her first tremor, an inescapable part of most days is her workout with dyskinesia, which Lucy fondly calls "involuntary aerobics." Yes, she is a very healthy girl with a fairly messed-up brain. And that is why she is here, folks.
Cristina Sampaio, MD, PhD (Portugal) Born on January 13th, 1963. She obtained her MD and PhD degree in Clinical Pharmacology at the Lisbon School of Medicine, University of Lisbon, Portugal, respectively in 1986 and 1997. She is professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics and Senior member of the Movement Disorders Clinic, Department of Neurology. She is member of the Committee of Proprietary Medicinal products (European Medicines Evaluation Agency). She is co-ordinator Editor of the Movement Disorders Cochrane Review group. Since 2000 she is acting as Chairperson of the Evidence Based Medicine task force of the Movement Disorders Society and she is chairperson of the Neuropharmacology panel of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS). Her main research interests are design and methodology of clinical studies, pharmacoepidemiology and evidence based medicine.
Anthony Schapira, MD DSc FRCP FMedSci (UK) was appointed in 1990 as Chairman of the University Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Royal Free and University College Medical School, and Professor of Clinical Neurology at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square. He is Director of the Trust's Research and Development, and Clinical Head of Service for Neurosciences at the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust.
Prof. Schapira's research interests include the molecular and clinical aspects of neurodegenerative diseases, with special emphasis on Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. He has published over 500 papers. Prof. Schapira is the recipient of the Harveian Medal, the Royal College of Physicians Clinical Science Prize, the 1999 Opprecht Foundation Award and the 1998 European Prize for Clinical Science. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 1999. He was awarded the Duchenne Prize in 2005.
Michael A. Schwarzschild, MD PhD (US) After obtaining his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Princeton University, Michael Schwarzschild went on to medical and graduate neuroscience training at Harvard Medical School. There he pursued his PhD thesis with Dr. Richard Zigmond on the neurochemistry of tyrosine hydroxylase, the enzyme controlling dopamine biosynthesis. He next undertook neurology residency and then Parkinson's disease fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston under the guidance of Drs. Anne Young and John Growdon. During a postdoctoral research
fellowship with Dr. Steve Hyman in the mid-90's, he developed expertise in gene regulation and cell death pathways in the basal ganglia (the dopamine-rich brain region most affected in Parkinson's disease).
Since 1996 he has directed the Molecular Neurobiology Laboratory at MGH. There, working initially with the late Dr. Steve Fink and Dr. Jiang-Fan Chen, he has focused on adenosine-dopamine interactions and neuroprotection strategies in mouse models of Parkinson's disease. His laboratory has provided insights into the potential neuroprotective, anti-dyskinetic and motor stimulant properties of caffeine and more specific antagonists of the adenosine A2A receptor. He serves as co-chair and director of the international translational research conference, "Targeting Adenosine A2A Receptors in Parkinson's Disease" to be held in Boston May 17-19, 2006 (www.A2APD.org).
He has been the recipient of the George C. Cotzias Fellowship award from the American Parkinson's Disease Association and the Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholar award from the American Federation for Aging Research. Since 1997 he has been an active clinical investigator in therapeutic trials of the North American Parkinson's Study Group. He is currently an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and a staff physician on the Neurology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he works with Parkinson's patients and their families in his weekly movement disorders clinic.
Kapil D. Sethi, MD, FRCP (US) is Professor of Neurology at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. He also serves as Director of the Movement Disorders Clinic and the National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence. In addition, Dr. Sethi is a staff physician at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, also in Augusta.
An author of numerous reviews, abstracts, book chapters, and journal articles, Dr. Sethi has had his work published in numerous peer-reviewed publications, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, Neurology, and Movement Disorders.
With research interests in Parkinson's disease, restless legs syndrome, and cervical dystonia, Dr. Sethi had participated as principal investigator in numerous clinical trials and research studies. He is a frequent invited lecturer and has held visiting professorships at Albany Medial College, the University of Virginia, and the University of Missouri, among others.
Dr. Sethi is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the Royal College of Physicians (London), and also a member of the American Neurological Association, Movement Disorder Society, and the American Association of Physicians from India.
Dr. Sethi received his medical degree from Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, India. He completed a residency in internal medicine at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, where he also underwent fellowship training in neurology. Dr. Sethi continued his medical education by completing a research fellowship in neurology at the Charing Cross Group of Hospitals and Medical School, London, England. In addition, he was a registrar in neurology at the Welsh National School of Medicine at Morriston Hospital and served a neurology residency at the Medical College of Georgia.
Kathleen M. Shannon, MD (USA) received her medical degree from Rush Medical College in 1981. Following an internship in Internal Medicine and residency in neurology at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, she competed a 2-year fellowship in Movement Disorders, also at Rush. Dr. Shannon was on the Neurology faculty at Vanderbilt University from 1998—2001, then returned to a faculty position at rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s’ Medical Center in 2004. She is currently Associate Professor of Neurological Sciences at Rush University medical Center. Her Clinical interested include the broad spectrum of movement disorders. Her research interests are in pharmacological and other clinical trial in movement disorders.
Ira Shoulson, MD (US) is the Louis C. Lasagna Professor of Experimental Therapeutics and Professor of Neurology, Pharmacology and Medicine at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in Rochester, New York. He received his MD degree (1971) and postdoctoral training in medicine (1971-73) and neurology (1975-77) at the University of Rochester and in experimental therapeutics at the National Institutes of Health (1973-75). Dr. Shoulson founded the Parkinson Study Group (1985) and the Huntington Study Group (1994), international academic consortia devoted to research and development of treatments for Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and related neurodegenerative and neurogenetic disorders. He has served as principal investigator of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored trials "Deprenyl and Tocopherol Antioxidative Therapy of Parkinsonism" (DATATOP), the "Prospective Huntington At Risk Observational Study" (PHAROS), and more than 25 other multi-center controlled trials. He is the Director of the Experimental Therapeutics Program at the University of Rochester Department of Neurology, the chair of the executive committees of the Huntington Study Group and the Parkinson Study Group, an associate editor of Archives of Neurology, a member of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke Council, a consultant for the Food and Drug Administration, and the immediate past-president of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics (ASENT). He has authored more than 200 scientific reports.
Lisa Shulman, MD (US) is a neurologist specializing in Parkinson's Disease and other Movement Disorders. In addition to neurology, her diverse background includes training in nursing, education and health policy. She is currently Associate Professor of Neurology and Co-Director of the Maryland Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Dr. Shulman is the endowed Rosalyn Newman Distinguished Scholar in Parkinson's Disease.
Dr. Shulman's major research interest is the evaluation of the impact of chronic disease and the development and testing of interventions to prevent disability and improve quality of life. Related interests include neurobehavioral problems in movement disorders and women's health issues in Parkinson's disease, She is Principal Investigator of the Parkinson Study Group's POETRY and POEMS clinical trials, studies of estrogen's effects in postmenopausal women with Parkinson's disease. Dr Shulman is co-author of the reference book, Parkinson's Disease: A Complete Guide for Patients and Families.
During a health policy fellowship (1999-2000) sponsored by the American Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society, Dr. Shulman was instrumental in the introduction of The Chronic Illness Care Improvement Act of 2000, a comprehensive legislative initiative to improve the care of serious and potentially disabling chronic illness. She continues to be active in promoting health policy initiatives in both chronic illness care and long-term care.
Eric Siemers, MD (US) is a Medical Advisor at Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, and a Clinical Associate Professor of Neurology at the Indiana University School of Medicine. His research in neurodegenerative diseases and experimental therapeutics began during his neurology residency, and continues currently. He has participated in numerous clinical trials for investigational drugs for Parkinson and Huntington diseases. His research has included some of the first studies clearly demonstrating subtle motor and cognitive changes in presymptomatic individuals with Huntington's disease. He currently serves on the steering committees for NIH-funded studies seeking to identify susceptibility genes for Parkinson disease and seeking to characterize clinical progression in presymptomatic subjects with Huntington disease. He currently leads clinical research efforts at Eli Lilly concerning experimental treatments for Alzheimer's disease. In addition to experimental therapeutics themselves, Dr. Siemers has developed an interest and expertise in the use of biomarkers to aid drug development efforts for neurodegenerative diseases.
Antonio Simeone, PhD (Italy) is Professor of Developmental Genetics at the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, King’s College London; Group Leader at the CEINGE Biotecnologie Avanzate, Naples, Italy and holds a CNR position at the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics, Adriano Buzzati Traverso (IGB-ABT). He received his Ph.D in cellular and molecular genetics at the IGB-ABT. Subsequently he attained Group Leader status at the same institute before moving to the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, London in 2000. His major achievement is the isolation and functional characterisation of Otx genes for which he received the Liliane-Bettencourt Life Science Award in 2000. His research focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying specification and patterning as well as neural differentiation in the developing brain. In the last three years his interest has concentrated on elucidating the genetic pathways controlling identity and fate of dopaminergic progenitors in the ventral midbrain. One of his major interests is to develop the conceptual basis for potential regenerative therapies applicable to Parkinson’s disease using genetically manipulated embryonic and adult stem cells.
Horst H. Simon, PhD (Germany) is leading an independent research group at the Interdisciplinary Center of Neuroscience at the University of Heidelberg. He graduated from The Federal Institute for Technology (ETH) Zürich, Switzerland, in biochemistry and molecular biology. This was followed by training in developmental neurobiology as a Ph.D. student with Andrew Lumsden at the University of London, UK, and as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dennis O’Leary at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, USA. At the Salk Institute, he developed his interest in development and maintenance of the mesencephalic dopaminergic neurons with a focus on the transcriptional control of their differentiation and their adult cellular properties, which are the center of his current scientific work. He received a prestigious award from the German Federal Secretary of Education, Biofuture 98, which allowed him to establish his current laboratory.
Craig R. Smith, MD (USA) is currently the President of Williston Consulting, a firm providing advisory services to emerging biotechnology companies, and the former Chairman, President and CEO of Guilford Pharmaceuticals. In 1993 Dr Smith co-founded Guilford Pharmaceuticals and led the Company’s international development and commercialization programs for GLIADEL ®. Working with the Board of Directors and senior management, he built the Company to the point that it had two marketed products (GLIADEL ® and AGGRASTAT ®), a novel sedative hypnotic (AQUAVAN ®) in Phase III, two products in Phase II, and a deep early stage product pipeline. Dr. Smith trained in Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1972-1975 and then joined the faculty in Internal Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. Dr Smith’s principal research interests were in evaluating the clinical efficacy and toxicity of antimicrobials, predicting therapeutic response to drugs in individual patients, and methods for clinical trial design and analysis. From 1983-1984 Dr. Smith studied biostatistics and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health under a grant from the Milbank Memorial foundation. During his tenure at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Smith founded and led the Division of Internal Medicine, initiated the Johns Hopkins Pharmacoepidemiology program, published more than 80 original articles in medical journals, co-authored a textbook of Clinical Pharmacolgy, and was a member of several professional societies. In 1988 Dr. Smith joined Centocor as Vice President of Clinical Research where he led the late-stage development of Centoxin ® and the early development of ReoPro ® and Remicade ®. In 1992 he was appointed Senior Vice President of Business and Market Development and participated in several licensing transactions. In December 2004, Dr. Smith retired from Guilford. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. (GLFD, NASDAQ), LaJolla Pharmaceutical Co. (LJPC, NASDAQ), Depomed Inc. (DEPO, NASDAQ), Oxxon Therapeutics, and Excigen. He is Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Science and is a member of the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science.
Evan Y. Snyder, MD, PhD (USA) is both a neurobiologist and a clinician. He has just assumed the Directorship of the stem cell program (The Program in Developmental and Regenerative Cell Biology) and a professorship at the Burnham Institute, La Jolla CA. He is also the Director of Basic Research training for the Division of Newborn Medicine, Dept. of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and an Assistant in Neurology and Medicine (Neonatology) at Children's Hospital, Boston and in Neurology at the Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center where he helped found the Neuroregeneration consortium. He received his MD and PhD at the University of Pennsylvania in a combined degree program. His thesis suggested a pivotal role for insulin in neural development and survival. He pursued clinical training in pediatrics, child neurology, and newborn intensive care at Children's Hospital, Boston, the Harvard Longwood Neurological Training Program, and the Harvard Joint Program in Neonatology, respectively concurrently with post-doctoral research training in the Dept. of Genetics, Harvard Medical School in the use of retroviruses for studying neural development. His lab, first at Children's Hospital Boston and then in the Harvard Institutes of Medicine, studied neural stem cell biology from both a developmental and therapeutic perspective, an area of investigation in which he has been active for nearly 20 years. His team isolated the first human neural stems, reported in 1998. He maintains a clinical practice in newborn medicine and neurology.
Maria Grazia Spillantini, PhD (Italy) is Reader in Molecular Neurology at the Clinical School of the University of Cambridge, England. She was born in Arezzo, Italy. After receiving a Laurea in Biological Sciences, summa cum Laude, in 1981 from the University of Florence, Italy, she pursued research at the Department of Clinical Pharmacology of the University of Florence, at the Unit de Neurobiologie of the INSERM in Paris and at the Molecular Neurobiology Unit of the Medical Research Council in Cambridge. In 1987 she moved to the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where first, working in Dr M. Goedert’s group, she obtained a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University (Peterhouse) and later she worked as postdoctoral fellow with Professor Sir Aaron Klug. In 1996 she moved to the Brain Repair Centre and Department of Neurology where she is at present. She is an official fellow of Clare Hall and has received the following honours:
Winner of the 1985 prize for research on migraine; Winner of the 1993 prize for biomedical research; Winner of the 1995 and 1998 Moore Award of the American Society of Neuropathology; Winner of the 2000 Potamkin Prize of the American Academy of Neurology; Winner of the 2003 prize of the Italian League against Parkinson’s disease and dementia; Member of Peterhouse and Cambridge Official Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, from April 1997.
David G. Standaert, MD, PhD (US) has long been interested in the functions of the nervous system, and began working in research laboratories while still in high school. While an undergraduate at Harvard College, he worked with Dr. Edward Kravitz studying neuropeptides which regulate movement and posture in crustaceans. He enrolled in the combined MD-PhD program at Washington University in St. Louis in 1982. His graduate research was conducted in the laboratories of Drs. Clifford Saper and Philip Needleman. This work described the localization and function of the atrial natriuretic peptides in the central nervous system, and their role in central regulation of the cardiovascular system. His postgraduate training in Neurology was obtained at the University of Pennsylvania. During my residency, where he worked with Drs. John Trojanowski and Virginia Lee studying the neurochemical and neuropathologic features of Alzheimer's disease. In 1992, he moved to the Massachusetts General Hospital as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellow. He pursued clinical subspecialty training in movement disorders, and worked with Drs. Anne Young and Jack Penney studying glutamate receptors in the basal ganglia. At present he is an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and MGH. About 90% of my time is devoted to basic science investigations of basal ganglia anatomy, physiology and pharmacology, while the remaining time is spent in clinical practice or clinical trials of therapeutics in Parkinson's disease.
Matthew B. Stern, MD (US) is Director of the Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorder's Center and Parker Family Professor of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania. He also directs the Parkinson's Disease Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Philadelphia Veteran's Administration Hospital, one of six such Centers in the United States. The Center at Penn is one of the largest of its type in the country and has a long track record of achievement in clinical trials and experimental therapeutics. It is also one of the National Parkinson Foundation's Worldwide Centers of Excellence. Dr. Stern has authored or co-authored numerous papers on Parkinson's disease and edited or co-edited 6 books on Parkinson's and related disorders. He has served on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Neurology's Movement Disorders Section, is a member of the American Neurological Association and Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. In addition to serving as institutional investigator for numerous clinical trials, Dr. Stern has been the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator of many research studies related to Parkinson's disease and serves on a number of steering committees, executive committees and safety monitoring boards. He has lectured throughout the world on Parkinsonism and other Movement Disorders.
Barbara J. Stewart, PhD (US) is a psychologist, with a focus on psychometrics. She is professor emerita in the School of Nursing, Oregon Health & Science University in addition to being an adjunct investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Stewart has been on the faculty at the School of Nursing for 24 years. She served two terms (7 years) on the NIH Nursing Research Study Section. She has more than 40 peer-reviewed publications, focusing primarily on family care, gerontology and methodology. She has more than three decades of experience in teaching statistics and measurement. She has served on the thesis or dissertation committee or been the postdoctoral sponsor for more than 150 individuals in the past 35 years. She has also consulted with nurse researchers locally, nationally and internationally on their research. She has served as a coinvestigator and methodologist on numerous federally funded studies.
Dr. Stewart is highly committed to research on family care to frail elders. She has been involved in research in gerontology since 1976, and began her collaborative research with Dr. Patricia Archbold on family care in 1983. Drs. Stewart, Archbold, and their numerous collaborators have conducted research on family care in a variety of situation - family care to persons with Alzheimer's disease, family care during Parkinson's disease, as well as family care after hospital discharge and during home health care. In the 1980s, Drs. Stewart and Archbold developed measures for family caregivers and their care receivers, which they and numerous other researchers in family care have used over the past two decades. In 1992-1993, they published a two-part article with guidelines for selecting sensitive outcome measures for intervention studies. Their current research includes a home health intervention trial for frail elders and their family caregivers (R01 AG 17909) and longitudinal research on spouse caregivers of persons with Parkinson's disease.
Fabrizio Stocchi, MD, PhD (Italy) is a professor of neuroanatomy, consultant of neurology, and director of theneuropharmacology research programs of IRCS Neuromed, University "La Sapienza" and scientific director of the Institute for Parkinson's Disease Research, Vicenza, Italy. Professor Stocchi received his MD fromthe Unviersity of L'Aquila and his PdD fromt he Unviersity of Catania. He is an ative member of 11 societies, including the Movement Disorder Society, where is is co-chairman of the Education Committee, European Clinical Neuropharmacology Soceity, and European Federation Neurological Society. Professor Stocchi has published many books and papers in the field of Parkinson's disease.
David Sulzer, PhD (US) The Sulzer laboratory follows two major research directions, the elucidation of presynaptic mechanisms of midbrain dopamine neurons, and the mechanisms of neurodegeneration of these neurons.
The Sulzer lab first developed the techniques for direct presynaptic observation of quantal release in the brain, and is characterizing quantal release from ventral midbrain dopamine neurons. They have identified multiple mechanisms that modulate the number of molecules that can be released per synaptic vesicle exocytosis (quantal size) and the number of quanta released (quantal frequency). They are examining the effects of synaptically released dopamine in the striatum and its cortical innervation, which promises to elucidate the mechanisms by which dopamine neurotransmission is so plastic. They established the primary mode of action of L-DOPA, the most commonly used clinical treatment for Parkinson's Disease, which elevates the quantal size of dopamine release. The lab showed that overexpression of the dopamine vesicle transporter VMAT2 increases both quantal size and frequency, the latter by conversion of non-catecholaminergic synaptic vesicles to dopamine vesicles. Ongoing projects are to characterize modulation of release due to VMAT2 expression, alpha-synuclein expression, by second messenger systems, and in D2/D3 knockout animals. The lab introduced the contemporary model of how amphetamine redistributes dopamine from synaptic vesicle stores (the weak base hypothesis), and continues to study the compound's mechanism of action. In a second group of studies, the laboratory has developed novel optical methods using 2-photon microscopy to identify the activity of corticostriatal nerve terminals and their modulation by dopamine, amphetamine, and cocaine.
In his laboratory’s work on neurodegeneration, he introduced the cytosolic dopamine hypothesis to explain methamphetamine-induced neurodegeneration. In this model, amphetamines elevate cytosolic dopamine levels to the point that they are no longer effectively buffered by reducing equivalents and produce cytotoxic quinones that bind to proteins and DNA. To test this hypothesis, they have developed the first method to measure cytosolic dopamine, using a combined patch clamp /amperometric method in collaboration with. Manfred Lindau (Cornell). In other work, they found that postnatally-derived substantia nigra neurons in culture can be induced by DOPA or Fe to produce neuromelanin indistinguishable from human neuromelanin by microscopy and electron paramagnetic resonance. The lab has also begun to establish the role of lysosomes and autophagic vacuoles in disorders, in particular the degradation of alpha-synuclein, in collaboration with Ana Maria Cuervo (Einstein). They are also examining the profound effect of VMAT2 regulation on amphetamine neurotoxicity. A new set of experiments following these efforts has been to establish the molecular pathways of neuronal autophagy, which catalyze neuromelanin synthesis and produce the actual breakdown of neurites in methamphetamine toxicity.
Dr. James Surmeier, Ph.D. (USA) is the Nathan Smith Davis Professor and Chair of the Department of Physiology at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. Dr. Surmeier received his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from the University of Washington in 1983 where he studied somatosensory coding in the cuneate nucleus. After doing postdoctoral work examining nociceptive signaling in primate spinothalamic neurons with Dr. William Willis at the University of Texas, Dr. Surmeier moved to the University of Tennessee. There he trained with Dr. Stephen Kitai and began studying basal ganglia physiology and dopaminergic signaling. He joined the faculty of the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center in 1990, rising to the rank of Full Professor in 1997. In 1998, he moved to the Department of Physiology at Northwestern University and assumed his current position in 2001.
Dr. Surmeier’s current research program focuses on the ionic mechanisms underlying neural activity in the basal ganglia and their modulation by activation of G-protein coupled receptors, particularly those for dopamine. He has pioneered the application of modern patch clamp and single cell gene profiling approaches to understanding basal ganglia physiology, authoring nearly 100 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Science, Nature, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience and the Journal of Neuroscience. He has served in several advisory capacities to the National Institutes of Health, including chairing study sections for NINDS and acting as a Councilor for NIAAA. He also serves on the scientific advisory boards of the Hereditary Disease Foundation, Dystonia Foundation and the Tourette Syndrome Association. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, Neuroscience Letters and Developmental Neuroscience. He has received many scientific awards including the NARSAD Established Investigator award, the Riker Award, the Picower Foundation Award and the Jacob Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award. He currently is director of the Morris K. Udall Research Center of Research Excellence for Parkinson’s Disease at Northwestern University.
Clive Svendsen, MD (USA) has been involved with neuroscience research for the past 20 years and has over 100 publications. Beginning at the University of Cambridge, his early research focused on the cholinergic neuronal loss in Alzheimer's disease. Following 6 years of further research at Harvard in the USA in the area of Schizophrenia research and neurochemistry, Dr. Svendsen returned to Cambridge to pursue a PhD in neurodegenerative diseases and neurotrophic factors. It was in the very early nineties that he first began working with human neural stem cells as a possible source of tissue for transplantation in Parkinson's disease (PD) and Huntington's disease (HD). Together with leading researchers in the field, he has shown that human neural stem cells can be expanded to enormous numbers in the test tube, while retaining the potential to survive transplantation into models of PD. He is also involved in the world's first clinical trial to infuse the growth factor GDNF directly into the brain tissue of PD patients. His long term goals are to translate neural stem cell biology into clinical applications for PD, HD and ALS. In the short term he hopes to learn more about how the human brain grows and develops by studying the molecular signals underlying neural stem cell differentiation. Currently, Dr. Svendsen is professor of neurology and anatomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Director of the NIH funded Stem Cell Training Program and Co-Director of the Wisconsin Regenerative Medicine Program.
Ryosuke Takahashi, MD, PhD (Japan) graduated from Kyoto University Medical School in 1983 and worked as a clinical neurologist from 1983 to 1989. He started his research career in 1989 as a staff scientist at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute for Neuroscience. From 1995 to 1997, he worked as a visiting postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John Reed's laboratory at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, California. In 1999, he was recruited to RIKEN Brain Science Institute as a laboratory head of Laboratory for Motor system Neurodegeneration. In 2005, he was appointed professor and chairman at Department of Neurology, Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine. His major research interests are the molecular mechanisms underlying Parkinson's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Dr. Takahashi has been interested in the pathogenetic mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and the molecular mechanisms of cell death from the very start of his research career. He found that CNTF deficiency due to a null mutation in the CNTF gene does not lead to neurological diseases (Takahashi, R., et al. Nat Genet Nat. Genet. 7, 79-84 & 215, 1994). He elucidated that apoptosis inhibitory protein (IAP) family are endogenous caspase inhibitors (Deveraux, Q.L., Takahashi, R., et al. Nature 388, 300-304, 1997). He also found that XIAP, a member of human IAP family, has E3 ubiquitin ligase activity in vivo (Suzuki, Y., et la. PNAS, 2001). He further identified mitochondrial serine protease Omi/HtrA2 as a novel IAP inhibitor (Suzuki, Y., et al. Mol Cell, 2001). Regarding Parkinson's disease, he focuses his attention on autosomal recessive juvenile parkinsonism (AR-JP), which is caused by the mutations in the parkin gene. He found that parkin is a ubiquitin ligase (Imai, Y., et al. J. Biol. Chem., 2000). He furtehr identified misfoled Pael receptor (Pael-R) as a substrate of Parkin and proposed a hypothesis that accumulation of misfiled Pael-R may lead to AR-JP through ER stress (Imai, Y., et al. Cell, 2001) . Regarding ALS research, he in partuclarly inteerstested in the molecular mechanisms underlying mutant SOD1-associated familial ALS. He found that caspase-9 and calcium-permeable AMPA receptors play important roles in the disease progression and development of mutant SOD1 transgenic mouse model of ALS, respectively (Inoue, H., et al. EMBO J., 2003; Tateno, M., Hum. Mol. Genet., 2004).
Eng King Tan, MD (Singapore) is a consultant neurologist and clinician scientist at the Singapore General Hospital, National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore. He is also the principal investigator of the Neurogenetics laboratory at SingHealth Research. Dr Tan acquired his medical degree and neurological accreditation in Singapore and is also a member of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in United Kingdom. He underwent further clinical and laboratory fellowship training in Movement Disorders at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, USA, under the mentorship of Professors Joseph Jankovic and Tetsuo Ashizawa.
Dr Tan is in charge of the Movement Disorders program at Singapore General Hospital. His research interest include clinical trials and neuroimaging studies in Movement Disorders, genetic epidemiology, molecular genetics and pharmacogenetics in Parkinson's disease, essential tremor and cerebellar ataxias.
Dr Tan has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters.
Caroline M. Tanner, MD, PhD (USA) is a neurologist with special expertise in movement disorders, epidemiology and environmental health sciences. She is Director of Clinical Research at the Parkinson's Institute in Sunnyvale, California. Throughout her career she has been active in teaching, clinical research and patient care. Areas of special research interest include clinical trials of new therapies for movement disorders and epidemiologic investigations of movement disorders. At present, Dr. Tanner is involved in epidemiologic investigations of the genetic and environmental contributions to the causes of Parkinson's disease, atypical parkinsonism, essential tremor, motor neuron disease, dystonia and Tourette syndrome, including investigations in the NAS/NRC Veterans Twins Registry, in the Agricultural Health Study, in an ethnically diverse Northern California population and in China. She is also involved in numerous clinical trials. Dr. Tanner is a member of numerous professional organizations. She also serves in an advisory capacity for a number of not for profit patient support organizations and governmental bodies, and as a reviewer for numerous scholarly journals.
Bill TenHoor (US) has been developing businesses, markets, products, governmental programs and public policy initiatives for over twenty-five years. Trained as a social worker and operating as an innovator, executive and consultant, Bill has contributed to many major national efforts, including the National Institute of Mental Health's Community Support Program (co-author and program chief), the formation and operation of a behavioral health managed care company, now the nation's largest such company (co-founder, executive and officer), the development of the Nation's first mental health policy electronic bulletin board (consultant), and the operation of a psychiatric hospital holding company (officer and business development executive). Bill began his career in the Federal Government, where he served as an analyst, manager and executive, including a four-year period as the senior policy manager for mental health, aging, and human development for three successive Secretaries of HHS. Bill has over twenty publications and is a speaker at professional and trade organization conferences.
Cathi Thomas RN, MS (US) is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology and Director of Clinical Research and Educational Programs in the Movement Disorder Center at Boston University Medical Center.
Ms. Thomas has worked extensively with individuals with Parkinson's disease and their families. As a Clinical Nurse Specialist, she has developed programs to assess the impact of Parkinson's disease on a patient's family and provide education to assist in coping with this condition. She has coordinated the American Parkinson Disease Center since 1985, working closely with the Parkinson community. Her research activities have included participation as both coordinator and investigator in over forty research studies. She has participated in over one hundred presentations to professional and lay groups. She has also published educational materials and co-authored a handbook for patients with PD. She has facilitated local and national conferences for the APDA and American Association of Neuroscience Nurses.
Nancy Tingey (UK) founded Painting with Parkinsons, the Canberra art group for people with Parkinson's disease, in November 1994. The following year she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to study art as a therapy for Parkinson' s, travelling to the UK, Italy, Switzerland, Holland, Canada and the United States in 1996. Meetings with neurologists, art therapists, social workers and support organisations led to her developing a specialist Parkinson's program which has become a role model throughout Australia and the United Kingdom.
Her work combines her roles as a carer for her husband, diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1987, and her career as a practising visual artist, community art facilitator and curator. Dividing her time between Australia and the UK she coordinated the Catalyst exhibition of art work by people with Parkinson's and related workshops in London in 2003 and the program of art activities for the Asia-Pacific Parkinson's Conference in Melbourne in 2005.
The workshops use cues, prompts and triggers to stimulate creativity. They also explore the role of subconscious chance elements, music and meditation in encouraging people with Parkinson's to improve their quality of life through participating in art activities.
Creative art programs help people with Parkinson's disease to confront the limitations set by debilitating illness and discover new avenues of self-expression. They also acknowledge the pivotal role of facilitators, voluntary helpers and funding bodies who have enabled people's lives to change for the better through their art work.
Eduardo Tolosa, MD, FRCP (Spain) degree from the University of Barcelona. He obtained his neurological training at the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis. He was Visiting Scientist at Brookhaven National Hospital were ha worked with George Cotzias during 1974 and 1975, and subsequently he joined the faculty of the Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota. He was later appointed Chief of Neurology at the University Hospital in Barcelona in 1982, a post he currently holds. Since 1985, Eduardo Tolosa has been Professor of Neurology at the University of Barcelona's Faculty of Medicine. He is also Director of the Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorder Unit and of the University of Barcelona Brain Bank.
Prof. Tolosa was certified as a neurologist by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry in 1976. He became a Fellow of the in 1997. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association and of the Royal College of Physicians and founding member of the Movement Disorder Society (MDS) . He has been President of this Society and is the current President of the European Neurological Society. Prof. Tolosa is an honorary member of several neurological societies including the British Neurological Association and the French Neurological Society.
Prof. Tolosa's research and publication activities have brought him appointments to various peer-review journals. He is, for example, a member of the International Advisory Committee of the Archives of Neurology and has served as member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Neurology, Movement Disorders, Practical Neurology, the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry and the Journal of Neurology.
Prof. Tolosa reseach interest have centred on movement disorders and particularly in issues related to experimental therapeutics, etiology and pathophysiology of various Parkinson syndromes. His team has investigated on the clinical and molecular genetics of Parkinson disease and progressive supranuclear palsy. They demonstrated that an extended tau gene haplotype (H1E) in its homozygous state is overrepresented in PSP and described the only homozygous tau mutation so far in patients with PSP syndrome. He has also investigated in collaboration with neurophysiologist in his department brainstem mechanisms underlying several movement disorders such as dystonia and the various Parkinson syndromes defining the presence of brainstem abnormalities in various focal dystonias and atypical parkinsonisms.
In the areas of experimental therapeutics Prof . Tolosa was involved in pioneer studies defining mechanisms underlying levodopa related motor fluctuations, both, in patients and in animal models of parkinsonism and his team has been among the first in Europe to evaluate efficacy of novel surgical strategies for Parkinson disease such as subthalamic nucleus stimulation and its impact upon patients cognition and quality of life.
Concetta Tomaino, DA (US) is the Director of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function and Vice President for Music Therapy at Beth Abraham Family of Health Services where she has worked for the past 25 years. It is at this facility that Dr. Tomaino worked with the post-encephalitic parkinson's patients highlighted in Oliver Sack's book "Awakenings" Dr. Tomaino has traveled around the world lecturing on music therapy in Australia, South Africa, Italy, England, and Canada and is internationally known for her research in the clinical applications of music and neurologic rehabilitation. She is past president of the American Association for Music Therapy and received the Award of Accomplishment from Music Therapists for Peace at the United Nations. In 1999 she received a Touchstone Award from "Women in Music" for her visionary spirit. In 2004 she was awarded the Zella Butler Bronfman Award by UJA for her efforts in direct care for people with handicaps. She is on the faculty of the Brookdale Center on Aging and the New York State Geriatric Education Consortium and visiting faculty to Berklee College of Music and Shenandoah University. Dr. Tomaino own research is focused on finding the most efficacious uses of music-brain treatments that can potentially benefit those living with the effects of autism, dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, stroke or trauma.
Anna Lena Törnqvist; RN (Sweden) Specialized Nurse in Functional Neurosurgery at the department of Neurosurgery Lund University Hospital; PhD student, Medical Faculty Lund University Sweden.
Since 1995, she has been responsible for pre- and postoperative care for patients with movement disorders treated at the department of Neurosurgery. The assignment includes programming the DBS treatment, patient information/education, and together with the movement disorder team participate in patient selection and treatment evaluations. Her research areas are effects of different DBS electrical parameter settings, and treatment effects on the every day life of the patients and their next of kin.
Karol Traviss, BHE, MSc, RD (Canada) is a Registered Dietitian presently on faculty at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, as the Dietetic Education Coordinator. Prior to joining the university in 2003, she was a practice leader for clinical nutrition and a clinical dietitian at Vancouver Hospital. Her professional interests and experience include assessing the nutrition-related needs of patients and clients served by dietitians, determining clinically relevant approaches to nutritional care, addressing nutrition education and counseling issues, and contributing to the training of future dietitians. Karol is active within her professional associations and has served on Board of Directors of Dietitians of Canada. She has provided research presentations at numerous local, national and international professional conferences. She is a past recipient of the Ross Laboratories Award for excellence in clinical dietetic practice.
During her years at Vancouver Hospital, Karol developed a collaborative relationship with the Movement Disorders Program located at the UBC Hospital site. She is a co-author of Taking Charge: A Guide to Living with Parkinson's, a teaching booklet distributed by Parkinson Society Canada, which is now available in three languages. She appears in the educational video, Living Well with Parkinson's Disease, funded by Parkinson Society British Columbia (Susan Calne and Carole Shaw, producers), and is co-author of a paper on nutritional management of Parkinson's disease (Cushing ML, Traviss KA, Calne SM. Parkinson's Disease: Implications for nutritional care. Can J Diet Pract Res 2002;63:81-87).
Karol has served as resource to both Parkinson Society Canada and Parkinson Society British Columbia. She has given numerous presentations about nutritional issues to individuals with Parkinson's disease throughout British Columbia.
Enza Maria Valente, MD (Italy) was born in Rome on September 13th, 1972. She obtained her Medical Degree at the Catholic University School of Medicine in 1994. She has subsequently trained in Neurology at the same University, attending the services of neurophysiology and movement disorders, and received her certification in Neurology in 1999. She did a PhD in Neurogenetics at the Institute of Neurology, University College of London, under the supervision of Prof Nicholas Wood, and obtained her PhD degree in 2003. Since 2002, she has been Junior Group Leader of the Neurogenetics Group at the CSS-Mendel Institute in Rome. She now coordinates a group of 9 people, including medical and biological students, residents in medical genetics, PhD students and post-doctoral fellows. Her two major research fields have focused on the clinical and molecular genetic aspects of movement disorders (mainly Parkinson's Disease and dystonic syndromes) and of Joubert syndrome and related disorders (a group of syndromes characterised by a peculiar cerebellar and brainstem malformation and multiorgan involvement). In these fields, she has attained important results, including the mapping of several novel disease loci and the identification of a gene responsible for autosomal recessive parkinsonism (PARK6/PINK1). Her current research activity focuses on genetic mapping of novel loci, positional cloning of new genes, mutation analysis, genotype-phenotype correlations and functional characterization of the PINK1 gene product. Dr Valente liaises with the clinicians from different Institutions in Italy and abroad to collect families and patients, and is also in charge of the linkage facility of the CSS-Mendel Institute. She teaches Neurogenetics to residents in Medical Genetics and Neurology at the Universities "La Sapienza" and Catholic University of Rome. In September 2003 she has become Assistant Professor in Medical Genetics. She is author of over 50 scientific publications on international peer-reviewed journals and book chapters, is member of several scientific societies in Italy and abroad and is Principal Investigator or co-PI of a number of national and international research grants focused on Parkinson's disease and Joubert syndrome.
Alberto Vasconcelos, MSs (Portugal) obtained his BSc in Biology at the Lisbon School of Science, University of Lisbon, Portugal, in 1998. In 2000 he received is MSc in Developmental Biology from Lusofona University, Lisbon, after spending a year as a visiting research fellow at Columbia University, New York, USA. He then became a freelance medical writer, as well as a science and health journalist. Currently he writes for several Portuguese general and medical newspapers, mainly the Expresso and Tempo Medicina, and is a consultant on health journalism to national television information programs.
Gwyn M. Vernon, MSN, CRNP (US) is a nurse practitioner in a neurology private practice and Clinical Faculty and Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania. She has been caring for those with Parkinson's Disease for 24 of her 30 years of nursing practice. Previously, Gwyn was Clinical Coordinator of an APDA Center, and a National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence. She has participated in numerous research studies on PD, and published over 20 articles and book chapters on PD. Gwyn is a frequent lecturer on issues related to PD around the country.
Miquel Vila, MD, PhD (US) is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Columbia University in New York. He received his MD from the University of Barcelona Medical School (Spain) and then moved to the laboratory of Experimental Neurology and Therapeutics (Prof. Yves Agid) at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris (France), where he obtained a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Paris 6 (Pierre et Marie Curie). From 1998 to 2001, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the laboratory of Dr. Serge Przedborski at the Department of Neurology, Movement Disorders Division, of Columbia University in New York. His work is focused on the molecular mechanisms of neuronal death in Parkinson's disease and on the functional consequences of dopaminergic neurodegeneration in the function of the basal ganglia.
Francois Vingerhoets, MD (Switzerland) Born in 1958 in Neuchâtel Switzerland, Prof. Vingerhoets graduated as MD in 1982. He achieved his medical doctorate (DM) in Lausanne in 1987, completed his training as Neurologist FMH in Lausanne in 1991. From 1992 to 1995 he worked as a clinical and research fellow at the Neurodegenerative Disorders Center, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He joined the Neurology Department of the University hospital of Geneva in 1995 and is Privat Docent at the Geneva University since 2000. He joined the Neurology department of the University Hospital of Lausanne in 1998, is Head of the Neurodegenerative disorders unit since 2002, Head of the One-Day-In patient unit, Co-Head of the “Vaud-Geneva Program of Functional Neurology and Neurosurgery: Stereotaxy & Movement Disorders.” since 2000 and Associate Professor in Neurology in Lausanne since 2003. Prof. Vingerhoets’s research interests are Parkinsonism, movement disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, neuroimaging, gait and posture, and Deep Brain Stimulation. He is adhoc reviewer of 7 peer-reviewed neurological journals and the author of more than 120 publications comprising 80 peer-review papers.
Cheryl Waters MD FRCP (US) Born in Toronto, Canada, Cheryl Waters MD FRCP(C), holds bachelors and masters degrees in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto, where she studied dopamine receptor function with Philip Seeman. She completed medical school at University of Toronto, an internship at University of Chicago, and returned to Toronto for Internal Medicine, Neurology and a fellowship in Clinical Pharmacology. She moved to California and developed the Movement Disorder Program at the University of Southern California. She has been involved in research on the genetics of Parkinson's disease and the treatment of this disorder. She has been an investigator in numerous studies involving a variety of new medical and surgical treatments. She moved to New York in 1999 to take a position of Chief of Clinical Practice and Services, Division of Movement disorders, Columbia University where she is a Professor of Clinical Neurology. She has been named the first Albert B. and Judith L. Glickman Professor. She has authored numerous articles, and book chapters and one book in its third edition.
William J. Weiner, MD (US) is a nationally recognized leader in research and treatment for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. Dr. Weiner received his medical degree from the University of Illinois in 1969. He completed residencies at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center in Chicago and is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Weiner is a Professor of Neurology and the Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Director of the Maryland Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center. His special research interests include movement disorders treatment trials, and comprehensive medical and surgical treatment of Parkinson's disease. In addition to publishing 15 neurology text books and more than 175 professional articles, Dr. Weiner is co-author of a new book for consumers, "Parkinson's Disease: A Complete Guide for Patients and Families. The book is a comprehensive resource for understanding the medical, emotional and practical challenges of life with Parkinson's disease. Dr. Weiner is a reviewer for several well-known journals, including Neurology, Annals of Neurology, Archives of Neurology, New England Journal of Medicine and Movement Disorders. He is also the editor-in-chief for Current Treatment Options in Neurology and the clinical review editor of Movement Disorders.
Dr. Weiner has been an invited speaker at numerous local and international meetings. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and a member of the American Neurological Association and Movement Disorders Society.
Mickie D. Welsh, RN, DNSC (US) has worked for 12 years at the University of Southern California with patients having Parkinson's disease (PD) and their families. The devastating effects of PD for the patient and the entire family highlight the importance of addressing issues beyond motor function. After studying illness impact and psychosocial adjustment in PD patients, she realized the need to understand better and measure these issues from the patient's perspective. What was missing was a valid and reliable PD-specific quality of life measure.
Dr. Welsh developed the Parkinson's disease quality of life scale (PDQUALIF). The PDQUALIF was developed using both qualitative and quantitative methods and contains no motor function specific behaviors. To complement the PQDUALIF she developed the Parkinson Patient Self report Scale (PPSS) which measures patients' motor functions from their perspective and complements the "gold standard" clinical outcome measure, the UPDRS. Her interest in measurement and methods continues.
Dr. Welsh's publications in quality of life concerns for PD patients include sexuality in females, coping and adjustment, the impact of experimental medications on quality of life, measurement and instrument development. She is presently conducting a large study to identify PD-specific community resources needed but not available to patients and families.
Carol J. Whitlatch, PhD (USA) is the Assistant Director of the Margaret Blenkner Research Institute of Benjamin Rose. She received her BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, her MS in Gerontology from the University of Southern California, and her PhD from The Pennsylvania State University. She has been a fellow with the National Institute of Aging, and, as a post-doc at the University of California San Francisco, with the National Institute of Mental Health. Dr. Whitlatch has worked for over 20 years in the field of gerontology studying a variety of topics, most notably, family caregiving for persons with chronic illnesses and/or dementia. Currently she is either Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on grants funded by the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Retirement Research Foundation that examine family caregiver issues such as: intervention strategies and evaluations; choice and decision-making in caregiver-care receiver dyads; and autonomy and functioning in African American caregiving families.
Dr. Whitlatch is an Adjunct Faculty Member at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, where she teaches graduate courses in family caregiving. Dr. Whitlatch is member of the National Advisory Committee of the National Center on Caregiving and Associate Editor of Dementia: The International Journal of Social Research and Practice. Dr. Whitlatch is the author or co-author of over 50 articles, book chapters, or books on family caregiving topics ranging from issues of placement, the stress process, service utilization, intervention evaluations, and more recently, including the person with dementia in research and practice.
Peggy Willocks (US) is a former elementary school principal and 1997 Tennessee Principal of the Year. Peg was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1994 and retired in 1998 on disability. She, her husband, three grown children, and two grandchildren reside in Johnson City, Tennessee.
Ms. Willocks is an active advocate for people living with Parkinson's disease and volunteered for a group of the same name People Living With Parkinson's (PLWP) as co-editor of their newsletter, Virtuality, and one of their on-line journalist for four years. She has been the President of NE Tennessee Parkinson's Disease Support Group since 1999. In 2004 she founded the Tri-State Young Onset Parkinson's Support Group in Tennessee and filled the role of Parkinson Action Network (PAN) Tennessee State Co-Coordinator for grassroots advocacy from 2002 to 2004. In 2003 she received PAN's Louis Fishman Advocacy award. She is a core member of the Parkinson Pipeline Project and the 2005 recipient of PAN's Milly Kondracke Award for Outstanding Advocacy.
Benjamin Wolozin, MD, PhD (US) completed his undergraduate education at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as part of the Medical Scientist Training Program. His postdoctoral fellowships were spent at Mt. Sinai Medical Center (1988-9) and the National Institute of Mental Health (1989 – 96). He joined Loyola University Medical Center in 1996 as an Associate Professor and rose to the rank of tenured full professor. He joined the Boston University School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology in 2004 as a Professor, and is currently obtaining an adjunct position in the Dept. of Neurology.
Dr. Wolozin has received numerous awards for his research including the Donald B. Lindsley Prize, Society for Neuroscience, the A. E. Bennett Award and a Merit Award from Alzforum. He serves on numerous editorial boards, including for the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and is a standing member of the NIH CDIN study section.
Dr. Wolozin's laboratory investigates the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases. The research on Parkinson's Disease focuses on the interaction between genetic factors implicated in Parkinson's disease, such as α-synuclein, parkin, DJ-1, LRRK2 and environmental factors, such as the mitochondrial toxin rotenone. Each of these genes appears to affect proteasomal function and mitochondrial function. Our studies of α-synuclein show it is a protein chaperone homologous to the 14-3-3 family of protein chaperones, and α-synuclein binds to the proteasomal protein S6' and inhibits proteasomal function. Parkin is an E3 ubiquitin ligase that is part of the ubiquitin proteasomal system. The mitochondrial link is apparent in our studies in C. elegans where we observe that expressing α-synuclein or knocking out parkin potentiates rotenone toxicity, but this toxicity can be over-come by pharmacologic manipulation of the electron transport and apoptosis pathways. The research on Alzheimer's disease focuses on the interaction between the proteins that produce β-amyloid (amyloid precursor protein, presenilins and BACE) and the genes that regulate cholesterol metabolism, such as apolipoprotein E, LRP and Cyp46. Many of these proteins, such as apolipoproteins E and Cyp46, co-localize with neuritic plaques. Genetic studies suggest that polymorphisms in these genes are risk factors for late onset Alzheimer's disease. We have observed that inhibiting production of cholesterol or increasing production of oxysterols (the product of Cyp46) inhibit production of β-amyloid and might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease. We are investigating the mechanism by which cholesterol and oxysterols modulate β-amyloid production, with the goal of developing novel therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease.
At present, Dr. Wolozin serves as the primary investigator for several funded studies including, Regulation of Amyloid Precursor Protein Processing by Presenilins, Regulation of Ubiquitination and Receptor Signaling by Parkin, Mechanisms of a-synuclein aggregation and toxicity and Epidemiological Screen for Medicines that Modify the Course of Alzheimer's disease.
Dr E.Ch. Wolters, MD, PhD (The Netherlands) received his MD degree from the State University of Utrecht, and his Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his neurological training at the Neurological department of the University of Amsterdam. He served with the faculty of this University until 1984, when he joined the Department of Neurology and the Research Institute Neuroscience at the Vrije Universiteit Medical Center in Amsterdam. In 2000, he was appointed as full professor in neurology. Dr Wolters is active in the field of movement disorders, he is a member of several national and international neurological societies and has written numerous publications and several neurological textbooks.
Mitsutoshi Yamamoto MD (Japan) graduated from Okayama University Medical School. He had a training of psychiatry for one year at Okayama university hospital. After that, he had training of neurology and internal medicine at National Okayama hospital. He continued training of neurology and psychiatry at Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Okayama university hospital. He passed Neurology board examination and promoted to assistant professor in 1981. He was engaged at nuerochemical and neuropharmacological studies of PD and related disorders.
He moved to Kagawa Prefectural Central Hospital as chief neurologist in 1983. He serves as a Director of Department of Neurology. He is a member of the Educational Committee of MDS, the Executive Committee of MDS-AOS (Asia Oceania Section), and also serves a secretary-elect of Movement Disorder Society of Japan (2006-207).
Dr. Yamamoto wrote more than 200 papers including reviews, original articles and case reports in English and Japanese. He first published a Japanese textbook of Parkinson's Disease for patients and their families in 1991. He also serves as a president of International Parkinson's Disease Symposium in Takamatsu since 2002.
Moussa B.H Youdim, MD (Israel) is Professor of Pharmacology, Finkelstein Professor of Life Sceinces, Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Director of Eve Topf and US National Parkinson Foundation Centers of Excellence for Neurodegenerative Diseases Research at Technion-Rappaport Family Faculty of Medicine, Haifa, Israel.
His research accomplishments is in the area of basic neuropharmacology and neurochemistry r focusing around neurotransmitters in health and disease, and in particular, the important roles of the brain monoamine oxidase (MAO) A and B enzymes, and their connection with abnormal brain iron metabolism in normal brain and neurodegenerative diseases , resulting in oxidative stress induced neurodegeneration. His fundamental discoveries and development of selective MAO A and B inhibitors for the treatment of depressive illness and Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease led have to the concept of neuroprotection initiated by the drugs (MAO inhibitors, multi-functional neuroprotective anti-apoptotic, cholinesterase inhibitors, iron chelators, radical scavengers) for neurodegenerative diseases. . His research has been a classical approach by taking the subject of monoamine oxidases and brain iron metabolism and develop them to their full extent in order to determine their physiological roles in the central nervous system and persue them into the clinic . Together with his colleagues he was responsible to identify l-deprenyl (selegiline), a failed anti depressant as an antiParkinson drug, and led to introduce the concept of neuroprotection ) prevention of dopamine neurodegeneration. He is the only academics that has been able to translate his basic work from the laboratory studies successfully all the way to the clinic as a consequence of his drug discoveries and developments. More recently he has successfully developed the antiParkinson drug rasagiline (agilect), and antiAlzheimer anti Lewy body disease, drug ,ladostigil. More recently he has developed the novel multifunctional drug M30 and derivative iron chelators to iron out iron from the brain, which is thought to be involved in the process of neurodegeneration.
His fundamental contributions are included in standard text books These include the insertions of two of his fundamental works on MAO and brain iron metabolism as subjects in the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (Elseveir Publishers, The only Israel neuroscientist to be asked to do so), Handbooks of Neurochemistry (Ed. A Lajtha ), Methods in Enzymology Ed.O.Kapplan), Basic Neurochemistry (Ed. G.J.Siegel), Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology (Eds U.Trendelenburg and N.Weiner) and Handbook of Neurodegenerative Diseases (Ed.D.Calne). He has published over 750 papers and edited some 40 books. His publications also include many invited reviews that have been published in Scientific American, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA, TIPS, Nature, Nature Review Neuroscience, Journal of Neurochemistry, British journal of Pharmacology Annals Of Neurology, Experimental Neurology, News In Physiological Sciences, Biochemical Pharmacology, Nutrition, The Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, Journal of Molecular Neuroscience, Expert Reviews in Neurotherapeutics Free Radical In Biology and Medicine and Methods in Enzymology just to mention a few...
Prof. Youdim has served on the Editorial Board of some 32 international Journals, including Journal of Neurochemistry, International Neurochemistry, British Journal of Pharmacology, NeuroRex, European Journal of Pharmacology, Psychopharmacoilogy, Neuropharmacology, Experimental Neurology, Biochemical Pharmacology, Journal of Neural Transmission, CNS Drug Review Neurotoxicity |Research, Journal of Molecular Neuroscience Neuropsychiatric Diseases and Treatments , Future Drug, Drugs of Today just to mention a few. He is also Editor of basic section of Parkinsonism and Related disorders and Advances in Neurodegeneration Research.
He has received numerous International and National Awards and Prizes, including the Anna Monkia Prize, Burda Parkinson Prize, Eli Lilly Psychopharmacology Prize, Sandoz Prize, Israel National Pscychobiology Center Research Achievement Prize, International Swiss Prize for Nutrition, Claudius Galenus Gold Medal Prize for Parkinson Disease, The New England Prize for Excellence In Science, Henning Andersen International Prize and several Honory Causa doctorn of Philosophy just to mention a few. But the one he most cherishes is being made Fogarty International Scholar in Residence at Center For Advanced Study In Human Health at NIH from 1991-1999 and receiving their Medal.
Anne B. Young, MD, PhD (US) Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and the Chief, Neurology Service at Massachusetts General Hospital is a researcher and clinician whose work at the bench and bedside have concentrated on neurotransmitter systems in the basal ganglia and their role in Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Dr. Young holds membership in both the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Young is a Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude graduate of Vassar College who completed her medical studies at Johns Hopkins in 1973. She received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from Johns Hopkins in 1974, and then completed residency training in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. After residency, she joined the neurology faculty at the University of Michigan where she advanced to Professor in 1985. In 1991, she was recruited to the Massachusetts General Hospital as Chief of the Neurology Service and Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Young provided some of the first evidence that glutamic acid is a neurotransmitter. Subsequently, she and her colleagues identified glutamate as a transmitter of corticostriatal and corticospinal tracts. Her laboratory first described techniques to measure subtypes of glutamate receptors autoradiographically and went on to demonstrate receptor alterations in Huntington's and Alzheimer's disease.
Dr. Young's current research work includes elucidating cellular and systems mechanisms underlying the pathophysiology of neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. In an effort to help develop therapeutic targets for human disorders of movement, she is conducting studies on the vulnerability of neurons to excitotoxic injury and the selective expression of glutamate receptors in these neurons.
Recently, she has discovered that transgenic animals expressing exon 1 of the huntingtin protein (Huntington's disease is caused by a mutation of the gene encoding this protein) have markedly altered receptors that may play a central role in the neuronal degeneration of Huntington's disease. Her studies suggest that mutant huntingtin may alter receptor expression selectively when it accumulates in the nucleus. Altered receptor expression occurs early and may contribute to selective cell death.
Dr. Young serves on the editorial board of numerous biomedical journals and she has been the recipient of many awards and honors for her work. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of several voluntary organizations. She is the past President of the American Neurological Association and the Society for Neuroscience.
Luigi Zecca MD, PhD (Italy) is head of Degenerative Diseases Unit at the Institute of Biomedical Technologies of Italian National Research Council in Milano-I. His research interests are on brain aging and neurodegenerative mechanisms of Parkinson's disease with particular emphasis on the role of neuromelanin, metals and nitric oxide. He pioneered studies on neuromelanin and metals in human brain. In particular he described key aspects on the neuromelanin structure, synthesis, accumulation in aging, interaction with metals, role in neuroinflammation and others.
Michael J. Zigmond, PhD (US) is a Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh. His area of research interest is neuronal death and neuroprotection as it applies to neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Parkinson's disease. He received his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Chicago. Then, after postdoctoral training at MIT, he joined the faculty at the University of Pittsburgh.
Dr. Zigmond has held grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 1975, including a Research Scientist Award (1985-2001), and a MERIT Award from NIMH (1993-2003). He is currently co-director of the National Parkinson Foundation Center of Excellence at the University of Pittsburgh and has a long-standing relation with the Parkinson's Disease Chapter of Greater Pittsburgh. Dr. Zigmond also serves as editor-in-chief of Progress in Neurobiology and sits on the editorial boards of a dozen other professional journals, including Parkinson's Disease and Related Disorders. Dr. Zigmond has been a member of several review committees of the NIH, has served as the secretary of the Society for Neuroscience, and has been appointed to several scientific advisory boards including the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation and the Tourette Syndrome Association. He is currently is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
The Zigmond lab is currently focusing its attention on determinants of the vulnerability of dopamine neurons in several cellular and animal models of Parkinson's disease. Much of this work involves an examination of the role of trophic factors, including GDNF, and signaling cascades, including those involving ERK, JNK, and Akt.
Kathryn J. Zerbe, MD (US) is Professor and Vice Chairperson for Psychotherapy in the Department of Psychiatry at Oregon Health and Sciences University. She also holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and is Director of Behavioral Medicine in the Center for Women's Health at OHSU. Dr. Zerbe is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the San Francisco and Oregon Psychoanalytic Institutes.
A frequently requested speaker both nationally and internationally, Dr. Zerbe lectures on topics that include eating disorders, women's health, professional well-being and the psychology of 19th and 20th Century artists. She has authored over 50 clinical papers and book chapters and 4 books, including The Body Betrayed: Women, Eating Disorders, and Treatment and the forthcoming Integrated Treatment of Eating Disorders: Beyond the Body Betrayed (W. W. Norton).
Before joining OHSU's faculty, Dr. Zerbe held various clinical and administrative appointments at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. She occupied the Jack Aron Chair in Psychiatric Education and Women's Mental Health and served as a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Topeka Institute for Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Zerbe is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a Fellow of the Academy of Eating Disorders, and a Member of the American College of Psychiatrists and the American College of Psychoanalysts. She has been repeatedly selected as one of "America's Top Doctors" by the Castle-Connolly Guide.