Jim McAleer

Jim is the CEO and president of Alzheimer’s Orange County and Healthy Aging Center: Acacia. Additionally, he mentors and leads an Executive Team comprised of highly qualified and industry-experienced individuals, in developing and implementing the agency’s strategic plan.

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy is an award-winning television news journalist and nonprofit executive with a broad and diverse background leading some of the world’s most recognizable and respected charities. She has raised more than $100 million during the course of her career for organizations that improve the lives of children and families, cancer research, and important capital projects. Deborah joined the Alzheimer's Association as executive director for Orange County in April 2021.

Joshua Grill, PhD

Joshua Grill, PhD is a Professor of Psychiatry & Human Behavior and Neurobiology & Behavior at UCI. He serves as Director of UCI MIND, Associate Director of the UCI Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, and Leader of the Recruitment & Retention Unit for the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science. His research focuses on clinical trials across the spectrum of Alzheimer’s disease, and he has published a number of important findings on trial design, recruitment and retention, and research ethics.

Jennifer R. Gatchel, MD, PhD

Kenneth Kosik, MD

Kenneth S. Kosik is a physician scientist who held a series of academic appointments at the Harvard Medical School and achieved the rank of full professor in 1996. In 2004, Kosik became the Harriman Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Co-Director of the Neuroscience Research Institute at UCSB. Kosik’s group was one of several labs that discovered Tau protein in Alzheimer neurofibrillary tangles and defined many of its molecular features. His work has been instrumental in characterizing the large familial Alzheimer's disease kindreds in Colombia. He was the 2020 recipient of the Potamkin prize and an elected fellow of the AAAS. He has written The Alzheimer’s Solution: How Today’s Care is Failing Millions and How We Can Do Better and Outsmarting Alzheimer’s Disease. His work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker, BBC, CNN and 60 Minutes. His 2016 University of California Santa Barbara commencement address is archived and linked below.

Yakeel Quiroz, PhD

Dr. Quiroz is Professor in the Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences at Boston University, where she leads the Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention & Protection (MAPP) Lab. Her research focuses on identifying early cognitive and biological markers of Alzheimer’s disease and uncovering mechanisms that support cognitive resilience and delay dementia onset. For over 20 years, she has studied Colombian families with early-onset autosomal dominant Alzheimer’s disease (ADAD) caused by mutations in the Presenilin-1(PSEN1) gene. Dr. Quiroz leads multiple NIH-funded studies, including the Colombia-Boston (COLBOS) biomarker study of autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s disease, the Boston Latino Aging Study (BLAST), and the Healthy Aging and Resilient Brain Study on genetic modifiers of cognitive resilience. She is also a Co-Investigator on the Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS) and the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC). Dr. Quiroz’s work has earned national and international recognition, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Early Independence Award, the International Neuropsychological Society (INS) Early Career Award, and the Alzheimer’s Association’s Inge Grundke-Iqbal Award for most impactful research.

Sudha Seshadri, MD, DM

Dr. Seshadri is a behavioral neurologist, and the Robert R. Barker Distinguished University Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Cellular and Integrative Physiology at the Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio. She is also the founding director of the Glenn Biggs Institute for Alzheimer's & Neurodegenerative Diseases, and the NIA funded South Texas Alzheimer's Disease Research Center where she treats patients with various dementia, MCI and brain related diagnoses. She is also an adjunct Professor of Neurology at Boston University and a Senior Investigator at the Framingham Heart Study where she leads studies on circulating, multiomic, sensorimotor, MRI and PET biomarkers. She has obtained over $120 million in NIH grant funding, has published over 600 papers and mentored students and trainees at all levels, from high school students to junior faculty. Her research interests are in uncovering the biology of Alzheimer’s and related dementias, stroke, and vascular brain injury.

Vivek Swarup, PhD

Dr. Vivek Swarup is a computational neuroscientist who leads a systems biology lab focused on understanding neurodegenerative diseases through data-driven genomics approaches. He earned his molecular neuroscience background in India and Canada, where he developed TDP-43 mouse models for ALS research under Dr. Jean-Pierre Julien. As a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Daniel Geschwind at UCLA, Swarup specialized in multi-omic analyses of neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, contributing to major genomics consortia including NIA's AMP-AD and PsychENCODE.
Currently at UC Irvine's Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders (UCI-MIND), Swarup's lab employs cutting-edge single-cell genomics techniques to study Alzheimer's disease and aging in both human samples and mouse models. He also serves as director of genomics for UCI's MODEL-AD center, developing novel late-onset Alzheimer's mouse models. His lab is recognized for its comprehensive data science approach, generating and analyzing multi-scale datasets while validating findings through mouse and iPSC models. Swarup has received the American Foundation for Aging Research Young Investigator Award and serves as co-investigator on multiple NIH and private foundation grants.

Jennifer Weuve, MPH, ScD

Dr. Weuve is a professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH). She is co-Director of the international initiative, MEthods in LOngitudinal research on DEMentia (MELODEM) and PI of the NIH-NIA grant that supports it. She is also PI or co-investigator of several NIH-funded projects that examine whether and how exposures to toxicants in the environment—e.g., air pollutants, noise, heavy metals—affect the arcs of the aging brain and body. With engagement of multi-disciplinary teams, this research has informed the use of environmental policy and other strategies outside of the clinical realm as a means for reducing dementia and disability risks in whole populations. This research also comprises a foundation for newly funded inquiries into the contribution of environmental injustice to dementia inequities. Dr. Weuve earned an M.P.H. degree in epidemiology at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health; she earned a doctoral degree in epidemiology at the T.H. Chan Harvard School of Public Health, where she subsequently held a post-doctoral fellowship in environmental health. Prior to joining BUSPH, she was on the faculty of the Rush Institute for Healthy Aging in Chicago.

Jennifer Yokoyama, PhD