(Alphabetically)   J. Wesson Ashford, MD, PhD, Chair    Dr. Ashford is Senior Research Scientist at the Stanford / VA Alzheimer Center. He is involved in the coordination of several clinical trials sponsored by the NIH and corporations. He previously served as the Lead Investigator in the PET scan project and the first double-blind study of a cholinesterase inhibitor to treat Alzheimer's Disease among others. Dr. Ashford is leading an international group of scientists to advocate for wide-spread screening for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. He has been developing dementia measurement tools and screening tests that can be used for early detection of this prevalent condition and applied to the rapid and precise assessment of the efficacy of experimental treatments.  Prior to joining Stanford/ VA in 2003, he served as faculty at Southern Illinois University, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Kentucky, reaching the rank of tenured Associate Professor. He also directed the Geriatric Psychiatry Clinic at UCLA between 1980 and 1985 and the Lexington VAMC Memory Disorders Clinic.    His seminal work includes application of the basic physical principle of Relative-Time to dementia severity measurement, extended to the fields of Alzheimer’s disease and genetics. In addition, he originally proposed the now widely accepted theory of neuroplasticity as the vulnerable factor in Alzheimer’s disease. In 1989 he conceived the first application of Modern Test Theory in the field of Medicine using Item Characteristic Curve analysis to explain the properties of a cognitive test that has been popular for measuring dementia severity. Earlier, his PhD dissertation was a finalist for the Donald B. Lindsley Prize of the Society for Neuroscience, as the first to show physiologically how the brain uses massive parallel distributed processing to analyze information.   Dr. Ashford attended UCLA attaining an M.D. degree, a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and finishing his psychiatry residency.  He obtained his BA from the University of California, Berkeley.           Achilles Bardos, PhD   Dr. Bardos is Professor of Psychology at the University of Northern Colorado. He will consult in the psychological evaluation of AD patients undergoing treatments. His teaching and research interests include intelligence, psychological and educational assessment, measurement, computer applications in psychology, program evaluation, and evaluation of psychological services. He has published many articles, book chapters, and presented over 100 papers and workshops at national and international conferences. He co-authored the General Ability Measure for Adults (Naglieri, Bardos,  1997) and the Basic Achievement Skills Inventory (Bardos, 2004). He has consulted in the development of other intelligence and personality tests.       John W. Commissiong, PhD   John Commissiong’s background is in neurophysiology and more recently molecular neuroscience.  He has held positions as Professor: Department of Physiology, McGill University (1079-89); Chief: Unit of Neural Transplantation, NINDS (1989-94); and Head: Neurotrophic Factors Group: Laboratory of Molecular Biology, NINDS (1994-97).  Since 1997, he has served in senior management positions in several CNS biotechnology companies in the United States and Canada, and is currently President and CEO of Neurotrohics Inc., a CNS biotechnology company in Toronto.  His current focus is the discovery of astrocyte-derived neurotrophic factors as drug candidates to treat neurodegenerative diseases, with Parkinson's disease as the focus.  In 2002, his Group discovered hMANF, a 20 kDa neurotrophic factor indicated for Parkinson's disease and epilepsy, and the first such molecule to be discovered since GDNF was announced in 1993.  Dr. Commissiong is convinced that the new understanding of homotypic, bidirectional, molecular communication between astrocytes and neurons will lead to the discovery of new classes of drugs to treat clinical depression, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson’s disease.  Leptin may have a crucial part in this communication.  John is also co-founder of CNS Protein Therapeutics, a start-up company focusing on Parkinson's disease.         Peter J. Dussias, MBA Peter Dussias is Executive Director - Business Development Operations at Innovex Inc., the commercialization services division of Quintiles Transnational Corporation. He brings a 15-year record of success at top 10 pharmaceutical companies and professional services firms combining expertise in both commercialization and product development.  Prior to his current role at Innovex, Peter led the clinical analytic services function at Dendrite International where he developed clinical trial patient recruitment as well as drug safety & risk management services.  Mr. Dussias co-authored and presented “Utilization of Diet Drugs in the U.S. Across Payer Types” for the International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology Annual Conference (2003). In the commercialization arena, he has launched several primary care and specialty contract sales teams, including the launch of two new companies and their first products.  Peter worked for Bristol-Myers Squibb as a new product development manager, and began his pharmaceutical career with Glaxo Inc. in 1992, serving in a variety of sales positions. Mr. Dussias holds a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan and M.B.A. in Marketing from Rutgers University Graduate School of Management.         Nikolaos Robakis, PhD    Dr. Robakis is A.P. Slaner Professor for Neurobiology of Alzheimer's Disease Research and Director of the Center for Molecular Biology and Genetics of Neurodegeneration at Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM) since 1994. He is a pioneer in Alzheimer’s Disease research, as his laboratory was among the first groups to clone the APP gene. He has been working on the molecular biology and genetics of AD for more than 20 years. Dr. Robakis joined MSSM in 1987 as an Associate Professor of Molecular Neurobiology in the Department of Psychiatry. Prior to MSSM,  Dr. Robakis worked for Hoffman-La Roche, Inc and earned his PhD degree at the New York University. Dr. Robakis received numerous awards, including the Zenith Award of the Alzheimer’s Association, the McKnight Neuroscience Development award for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Helenic Medical Association of New York, the T.L.L. Temple Foundation Award of the Alzheimer’s Association and the MERIT Award of the NIH.       Mark A. Smith, PhD   Dr. Smith is a Professor of Pathology at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). His research expertise includes: Aging, Alzheimer disease, Cell cycle control, Cytoskeletal organization, Neurodegeneration and Oxidative stress. Prior to joining CWRU in 1992, he worked for Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, Austria and he obtained his PhD from Nottingham University, UK. Dr. Smith has authored nearly 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and chapters over the past decade and serves on the editorial boards of numerous scientific journals. He is the recipient of several awards including the Ruth Salta Junior Investigator Achievement Award from the American Health Assistance Foundation, Young Scientist Lectureship Award from the International Society for Neurochemistry, the Nathan Shock New Investigator Award from The Gerontological Society of America, the Zenith Award from the Alzheimer's Association, the Jordi Folch-Pi Award from the American Society of Neurochemistry, and the Hermann-Esterbauer Award from the HNE Society.           Benjamin Wolozin, MD, PhD   Dr. Wolozin is Professor of Pharmacology at Boston University School of Medicine since 2004. He joined Loyola University Medical Center in 1996 as an Associate Professor and rose to the rank of tenured full professor in 2002. Prior to Loyola University he was at the National Institute of Mental Health (1989-1996) and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine (1988-1989). He earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Albert Einstein College of Medicine and his B.S. in Chemistry from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Dr. Wolozin has made pioneering discoveries  in AD, including a role of cholesterol in the pathobiology of AD. He has also worked extensively in the role of proteasome in Parkinson’s Disease. His approaches to studying neurodegenerative disease encompass a wide range, from molecular biology to epidemiology and clinical studies. 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.