Scientific Leadership

Jayashree Kalpathy-Cramer is the Director of the QTIM lab and the Center for Machine Learning at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and an Associate Professor of Radiology at MGH/Harvard Medical School. Kalpathy-Cramer is also Scientific Director at MGB Center for Clinical Data Science and a Senior Scientist at the American College of Radiology Data Science Institute. She is an electrical engineer by training, having received a B.Tech in EE from IIT Bombay and a PhD in EE from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Her research interests include medical image analysis, machine learning and artificial intelligence for applications in radiology, neurology, oncology and ophthalmology. The work in her lab spans the spectrum from novel algorithm development to clinical deployment. She is passionate about the potential that these techniques have to improve access to healthcare in the US and worldwide. Kalpathy-Cramer has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and has written over a dozen book chapters.

She is a Deputy Editor for the Radiology-AI journal, a journal from the Radiological Society of North America focused on the applications of AI in Radiology. This year, she was elected to the Council of Distinguished Investigators of the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research.

Knopman is an experienced clinical neurologist with interests in the spectrum of degenerative and cerebrovascular diseases causing cognitive impairment. He is an Associate Director of the Mayo Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. Knopman has also been involved in clinical trials in AD and FTD. He is past chair of the Medical Advisory Council of the Association for Frontotemporal Dementia. He is immediate past-chair of the MSAC of the Alzheimer Association and was on the steering committee of the National Alzheimer Prevention Act Alzheimer Disease and Related Disorders Workshops in May 2013, March 2016 and March 2019.

Ronald C. Petersen received a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Minnesota and graduated from Mayo Medical School in 1980. He completed an internship in Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and returned to the Mayo Clinic to complete a residency in Neurology. That was followed by a fellowship in Behavioral Neurology at Harvard University Medical School/Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Petersen joined the staff of the Mayo Clinic in 1986 and became a Professor of Neurology in 1996. In 2000 he was named the Cora Kanow Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Mayo Clinic Distinguished Investigator in 2011. He is currently the Director of the Mayo Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging and has authored over 960 peer-reviewed articles on memory disorders, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Petersen is one of the recipients of the 2004 MetLife Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s Disease and the 2005 Potamkin Prize for Research in Picks, Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders of the American Academy of Neurology. In 2012 he received the Khachaturian Award and the Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 from the Alzheimer’s Association. In 2011 he was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to serve as the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Research, Care and Services for the National Alzheimer’s Disease Plan, and in 2014, he was appointed to the World Dementia Council by the UK government.

Graff-Radford is a neurologist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester where he evaluates and treats patients with neurodegenerative disorders and cerebrovascular diseases. He completed fellowships in behavioral neurology and cerebrovascular neurology and a one-year post-doctoral research certificate through Mayo Clinic's Center for Clinical and Translational Science. He serves as a co-investigator in the Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Mayo Clinic Study of aging. He currently has a National Institute of Aging K76 career development award to study the pathogenesis of cerebral microbleeds. His research focuses on how neurodegenerative disease and cerebrovascular disease intersect to cause cognitive decline.

Bruce Fischl's research involves the development of novel techniques for the generation of models of neuroanatomical structures using MRI. This includes the automatic construction of geometrically accurate and topologically correct models of the human cerebral cortex, as well as segmentation of over 35 subcortical and ventricular structures. The cortical models have been useful in a number of domains, including the development of a technique that exploits the correlation between cortical folding patterns and function to generate a more accurate mapping across different brains. This high-dimensional nonlinear registration procedure results in a substantial increase in statistical power over more standard methods of inter-subject averaging and allows the automatic labeling of many anatomical features of the cortex. The surface models also yield measures of the thickness of the cortical ribbon, which is of great clinical and research significance as many neurodegenerative diseases result in progressive, regionally specific atrophy of the cortical gray matter.

Clifford R. Jack, Jr., M.D., is a consultant in the Department of Radiology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Jack joined the staff of Mayo Clinic in 1985 and holds the academic rank of professor of radiology, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. He is recognized with the distinction of the Alexander Family Professorship in Alzheimer’s Disease Research.

Vemuri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic Rochester and an imaging researcher in the population based sample of Mayo Clinic Study of Aging. She has a broad background in engineering and clinical neuroscience, with specific training and expertise in imaging of neurodegenerative disorders. Her areas of research are 1) Investigating mechanisms through which protective and risk factors influence AD imaging biomarkers and outcomes and 2) Developing and validating imaging-based biomarkers to improve the understanding and management of Alzheimer's disease and cerebrovascular disease.

Vemuri has over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and numerous conference abstracts and book chapters to her credit. Her research work is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIA and NINDS). She also leads MRI cores for large multi-center clinical studies on stroke (DISCOVERY) and Alzheimer’s disease (LEADS and US POINTER). She is the Chair of a large international professional area interest group on Reserve, Resilience, and Protective Factors and serves on several national and international committees including NIH study sections in her research area. Vemuri is recipient of the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence grant from the NIA, was awarded the AFAR-GE healthcare junior investigator award for excellence in aging and imaging research and the 2020 de Leon Prize in Neuroimaging in the Senior Scientist category.

Val J. Lowe, MD is a Professor of Radiology at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA, and is the director of the Mayo Clinic Molecular Imaging Resource. Lowe has served on numerous NIH review committees and panels. He has over 400 peer-reviewed publications, several patents and has funding through 22 NIH grants to study imaging. He has served as the President of the World Molecular Imaging Society and is an elected fellow of the Society. Lowe’s lab does PET radiotracer development, preclinical imaging and human imaging. Lowe and research collaborators at Mayo Clinic are evaluating the utility of PET and MRI multimodality brain imaging in neurodegenerative disease and aging. They test imaging as a way to evaluate populations for prediction, prevention and therapy of neurodegenerative disease.

Sudha Seshadri, MD, FAAN, FANA is a board-certified neurologist who has been caring for patients with dementia for over 2 decades. Since December 2017, she is the Founding Director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer’s and Neurodegenerative Diseases, and holds the Robert R. Barker Distinguished University Chair as Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Cellular and Integrative Physiology within the University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, Texas. She also holds an adjunct appointment as Professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and as a Senior Investigator at the Framingham Heart Study, where she leads the Neurology and Neurogenetics cores and serves as Principal Investigator of the Dementia, Stroke, Neuroimaging and Brain Banking Initiatives.

Fornage is a Professor of Molecular Medicine and Human Genetics and the Laurence and Johanna Favrot Distinguished Professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Texas. Her research program investigates the genetics and genomics of brain vascular disease and brain aging in diverse populations from young adulthood to old age. She is an active investigator of several large national and international consortia, including the Cohorts of Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) consortium, the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program and the NIA Alzheimer Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP). She has served on several NIH expert advisory panels, including as a member of the Genetics of Health and Disease (GHD) study section. She is a member of the Leadership Committee of the American Heart Association Council on Genomic and Precision Medicine and Stroke Councils.

Alessandro Biffi received his MD degree from University of Milan-Bicocca (Milan, Italy), and completed residency training in Neurology with the Massachusetts General Hospital /Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School training program. He subsequently completed a Behavioral Neurology and Neuropsychiatry Fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. Biffi's previous research training and expertise include statistical methodology, neurogenomics, neuroepidemiology and brain imaging. He has established the Aging & Brain Health Research Group at Massachusetts General Hospital, tasked with developing precision medicine tools for prevention and treatment of cognitive, behavioral and psychiatric disorders of aging. His primary research and clinical focus is prevention, diagnosis and treatment of neurocognitive and neuropsychiatric manifestations of cerebrovascular disorders.

Anand Viswanathan is a Vascular Neurologist and physician scientist who studies the relationship between vascular disease and cognitive impairment. His clinical and research goals are to better understand the pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying cognitive impairment and dementia associated with aging. Silent stroke and lesions due to cerebral small-vessel pathology are highly frequent in the elderly and impact cognition. His group’s area of research focuses on these cerebral small vessel diseases of the brain which, through silent ischemic stroke and intercerebral hemorrhage (ICH), can lead to vascular cognitive impairment and dementia in elders. Two such diseases that they study are cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) and cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL). He is an active member of the MGH Stroke Service and an executive committee member of the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s disease research center (MADRC). He had been the recipient of a K23 Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Award which investigates cognitive impairment and gait dysfunction in CAA. He led a sub-project on the MADRC program project grant (P50) during the previous funding period (2009-2014) related to influence of CAA on cognition in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. He is the PI of an NIH-funded grant that investigates vascular dysfunction in early and asymptomatic CAA (R01AG047975). He has the expertise and experience to serve as a lead co-investigator on the DISCOVERY Hemorrhagic Stroke substudy, working closely with Dr. Alessandro Biffi, with whom they already have a very close collaboration in the area of cognitive outcomes of ICH.

Jason D. Hinman is Assistant Professor of Neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles. A physician-scientist with clinical expertise in stroke and stroke recovery, Hinman’s laboratory focuses on translational neuroscience at the interface of stroke, cerebrovascular disease, and dementia. The lab uses cell-specific transcriptional profiling in models of stroke and dementia to identify novel cellular and molecular pathways relevant to these two most common neurologic illnesses. From these discoveries, Hinman’s lab aims to translate these findings into new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for stroke, cognitive impairment, and dementia.