Chief, Movement Disorders Division, Massachusetts General Hospital

Vice Chair for Neurology Research, Massachusetts General Hospital

Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Craig Blackstone, MD, PhD, is chief of the Movement Disorders Division and vice chair for neurology research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Previously, for nearly two decades, he was a tenured senior investigator in the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. His research group investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying hereditary neurodegenerative disorders. He has published approximately 180 research and review articles and has presented at approximately 200 invited lectures throughout the world. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and Association of American Physicians, as well as an elected fellow and former vice president of the American Neurological Association (ANA). He has held numerous other leadership roles within the ANA, including positions on its Executive Council, Education Innovation Committee, Nominations Committee, Professional Development Committee, Translational and Clinical Research Course Committee, Web Governance Committee and Research Careers Reimagined Subcommittee. He has served for more than a decade on the editorial board of the prestigious Journal of Clinical Investigation. He received the NIH Director’s Ruth L. Kirschstein Mentoring Award in 2012 and the NINDS Director’s Diversity Achievement Award in 2018. In 2022, Dr. Blackstone was elected to the National Academy of Medicine — the pinnacle of recognition for outstanding achievement in the medical sciences.

Co-founder and Director, Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery, Massachusetts General Hospital

Co-founder and Director, Neuroscience Data Science and AI Center, Massachusetts General Hospital

Elizabeth G. Riley and Daniel E. Smith Jr. MGH Research Scholar 2013-2018

Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Sydney S. Cash, MD, PhD, is co-founder and director of the Center for Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery and the Neuroscience Data Science and AI Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Cash is a staff member of the Department of Neurology at Mass General and is an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cash is a specialist in epilepsy with research expertise in cortical neurophysiology, including investigating the mechanisms of diseases and ways of interfacing with the brain to improve the lives of people with seizures, paralysis and other neurological difficulties. He has an international reputation for his clinical work and research achievements which range from fundamental discoveries in basic science to development of cutting-edge neurotechnologies and therapeutic approaches.

Dr. Cash received his MD and PhD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed his neurology residency, where he was chief resident, at Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Chief, Memory Division, Massachusetts General Hospital

Anne B. Young, MD, PhD, Endowed Chair in Neurodegenerative Disease, Massachusetts General Hospital

Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Teresa Gomez-Isla, MD, PhD, is the Anne B. Young, MD, PhD, Endowed Chair in Neurodegenerative Disease and a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. She is the chief of the Memory Division in the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and the director of the Dementia Fellowship Training Program. She also serves as associate director of the Massachusetts Alzheimer Disease Research Center and principal investigator of an Alzheimer’s Research Laboratory at the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease. She obtained her MD at the University Complutense of Madrid in 1989 and her PhD at the University Autonoma of Madrid in 1995. Dr. Gomez-Isla then completed her residency in neurology at Hospital Doce de Octubre in Madrid in 1994 and her fellowship in dementia at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1997. She served as director of the Memory Disorders Units at Clinica Universitaria of Navarre in Pamplona (Spain) and Hospital Santa Cruz y San Pablo in Barcelona (Spain) before moving to Mass General in 2009.

Dr. Gomez-Isla’s early work demonstrated the underlying brain changes that mark the transition between normal aging and earliest clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and the clinical and neuropathological impact of ApoE4 — the main genetic risk factor identified so far in late onset AD. These pioneering studies made significant contributions, advancing the dementia field to investigate new tools directed to early disease detection and intervention. She also generated and characterized novel transgenic mouse models mimicking Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders, opening the door to new therapeutic strategies to halt tangle deposition and neuronal loss. More recently, she has conducted key validation studies of multiple novel tau positron emission tomography (PET) tracers that have helped guide the correct interpretation of in vivo neuroimaging biomarker studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Dr. Gomez-Isla is now focused on the study of brains from individuals who display robust amounts of Alzheimer’s pathology at autopsy but never developed symptoms of the disease during life. She has discovered that in these unique, “resilient” brains there is reduced accumulation of soluble tau species in the synaptic compartment and little inflammatory changes, despite robust accumulation of plaques and tangles and a novel brain cytokine expression. This work has kicked off a renewed interest in studying the role of neuroinflammation and immunity in AD with potential implications for individual risk assessment, as well as novel therapeutic interventions directed to preserve cognition.

She is a Spanish Society of Neurology Alzheimer award winner, Spanish Alzheimer Association (Cuenca) award winner and Ernesto Gonzalez award winner (for outstanding services to Hispanic communities). She serves in the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center Clinical Task Force and the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry, helping with guidelines for the biological treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.

Dr. Gomez-Isla has trained multiple generations of young clinicians and scientist in the Alzheimer’s field. Her main goals are to provide the best possible clinical care to patients with dementia, fight inequality in access to clinical care, research opportunities for underserved communities, develop novel therapeutic strategies for patients with dementia and inspire future clinician-scientists.

Director, Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital

Co-Director, Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health, Massachusetts General Hospital

Co-Director, Mass General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, Massachusetts General Hospital

Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Co-Director of the McCance Center for Brain Health, Co-Director of the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, and the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Tanzi co-discovered the first Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genes including the amyloid gene (APP) and the first AD neuroinflammation gene, CD33. He also discovered the Wilson’s disease gene and helped discover the first ALS gene, SOD1. Dr. Tanzi’s lab first used human stem cells to create mini-human brain organoid models of AD, which have made drug discovery 100 times faster and 100 times cheaper. He has used these models to develop novel AD drugs including gamma secretase modulators that lower amyloid production and are being prepared for clinical trials. Dr. Tanzi has helped co-found numerous biotech companies, including Amylyx, which developed the newly approved ALS drug, Relyvrio. He has published over 650 papers, received numerous awards, including the Metropolitan Life Award, Potamkin Prize, and Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, and has been included on the list of the TIME100 Most Influential People in the World. Dr. Tanzi is also a New York Times bestselling author of Decoding Darkness, Super Brain, Super Genes, and The Healing Self, for which he has hosted several television shows on PBS. In his spare time, he plays studio keyboards for Aerosmith and other musicians.