NIH/Alpert T32 Research Training Fellowships
Dementia Research Training Program
Faculty
The Faculty of the Brown DRF has worked together in teaching, supervision, and research for over ten years. This diverse faculty has expertise in dementia and aging research, ranging from basic mechanisms of disease (e.g. small vessel cerebrovascular disease) to neurobehavioral issues (e.g. dysexecutive syndromes, neuropsychiatric symptoms associated with dementia, and caregiver burden). Fellows will select two senior scientists to serve as their basic science and clinical mentors during their training.
Clinical Faculty
Richard W. Besdine, MD, is Professor of Medicine, Director of the Center for Gerontology and Health Care Research at Brown University, Director of the Division of Geriatrics in the Department of Medicine, Chief of Geriatrics for Lifespan, and first Greer Professor of Geriatric Medicine. He is board certified in internal medicine, geriatrics and infectious disease. He has devoted his career to development and advancement of geriatrics through university-based and public health care policy work for more than 25 years; he has trained more than 90 physicians for academic careers in geriatrics. Before coming to Brown in 2000, he was Professor of Medicine, Director of the University of Connecticut Center on Aging, and Travelers Professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology at the University of Connecticut Health Center (UCHC) School of Medicine. He was also Principal Investigator of a NIH Claude Pepper Older Americans Independence Center, and oversaw studies of interventions for prolonging vitality in older persons. Prior to coming to Connecticut in 1986, he was on the Harvard Medical School faculty for 15 years. During that time, he co-founded Harvard's Division on Aging with John W. Rowe, M.D., and developed one of the first academic Geriatrics fellowship training programs (1977).He serves on the National Board of Directors for the American Federation for Aging Research, for the American Geriatrics Society, for the Alzheimer's association, the Education and Research Foundation of the American Society of Consulting Pharmacists, and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Alliance for Aging Research and of the Brookdale Foundation. Dr. Besdine is author of more than 90 publications, and author or editor of 13 books and monographs. A national reputation for leadership in geriatrics was recognized with the American Geriatrics Society's 1991 Milo D. Leavitt Award for eminence in geriatric education. He has also been honored with the 1995 Freeman Award of the Gerontological Society of America, the 1997 President’s Award of the American Society on Aging, and the 1998 Joan Quinn Award.
Ronald Cohen, PhD is aProfessor in the Brown DPHB. He is currently Principal Investigator of two NIA-sponsored grants and one industry-sponsored study. Dr. Cohen is nationally recognized as a leader in vascular dementia research and related research on the mechansms of attention. He was a member of the NINDS-AIREN task force for creating diagnostic guidelines for vascular dementia and has published extensively in the areas of vascular and neurodegenerative dementias. He also recently has developed a program of fMRI research. Dr. Cohen has trained over 20 neuropsychology fellows and is currently supervising two F32 fellows. His students have had great success obtaining research positions; recent trainees are now on research faculty at the University of Iowa and Brown University.
Robert Kohn, MD is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Brown Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Training Program. He is board certified in geriatric psychiatry. His research interests include cross-cultural influences on mental health, multi-national epidemiology of psychiatric disorders, and geriatric depression. He has held several research grants in the past 10 years. Dr. Kohn is recognized as an expert in cross-cultural issues in psychiatry; he serves as a Consultant to the World Health Organization and is a member of the International Consortium of Psychiatric Epidemiology. He has published over 50 articles relating to minority issues in psychiatry. Dr. Kohn has trained over 20 physician trainees, many of whom have gone on to academic careers.
Paul Malloy, PhD has served on the Training Committee of the Brown Psychology Training Consortium, the largest psychology training program in the country, since 1983. He served as Coordinator of the Neuropsychology Track of that program, leading the track from its inception to its current status as one of the leading neuropsychology programs in the country. He was promoted in 2000 to Co-Director of Postdoctoral Fellowship Training throughout the Brown consortium. He is a nationally respected mentor in neuropsychology, and was the first recipient of the Department’s “Outstanding Teaching Award in Psychology” in 1994-1995. He has supervised over 20 fellows and over 50 interns in neuropsychology. He currently serves as Co-Director of the Butler Hospital Memory Clinic. He collaborates with neurologists, radiologists and nuclear medicine specialists in his role as Co-director of the Butler Quantitative Neuroimaging Laboratory. Dr. Malloy’s primary area of research focus in recent years has been frontal/executive functions and its relationship to adaptive functioning in dementia. He has published over 90 scholarly articles, and co-authored two recent books on neuropsychiatric disorders.
Ivan Miller, PhD is Director of Treatment Research at Butler Hospital and Professor in the DPHB at Brown. He is an experienced clinical trials researcher with particular expertise in depression and family therapy. He is currently conducting NIH funded studies investigating: 1) the efficacy of a telephone based intervention for stroke patients and their caregivers, 2) the efficacy of combining pharmacotherapy, individual psychotherapy and family therapy for severely depressed patients, and 3) the efficacy of a new group based treatment for depression that combines group, individual and family modalities. Dr. Miller serves on two NIH review committees and has over 100 publications. He has an extensive track record as a research mentor. He will be available to mentor students with interests in late-life depression,and studies to decrease caregiver burden.
Vincent Mor, PhD is former Director of the Brown Center for Gerontology and current Chair of the Department of Community Health. Dr. Mor's research interests include organizational factors influencing long-term care quality; health services research in chronic disease; breast cancer management in older women; long-term care policy and organization. He has over 150 publications and over 10 active grants, including two NIA grants to study quality of care in nursing homes. He has mentored over 20 MD and PhD fellows in geriatric and epidemiologic research. He provides special expertise in epidemiological and large dataset archival research in the elderly.
Brian Ott, MD is Director of the Alzheimer’s Disease and Memory Disorders Unit at RI Hospital and Professor in the Brown Department of Clinical Neurosciences. The ADMDU is a principal site representing Brown in the Alzheimer Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a NIA funded consortium of Alzheimer’s disease research centers that conducts multicenter clinical trials. Dr. Ott is conducting an ADCS clinical trial of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication as well as various studies in the field of vascular dementia. Other active research studies being conducted by Dr. Ott’s lab and his collaborators include five clinical trials, including investigations directed at preventing progression from Mild Cognitive Impairment to Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and novel pharmacologic agents for treatment of AD. He has funding from NIA for a four-year longitudinal study of hazardous driving in dementia. Dr. Ott has trained 10 geriatric psychiatry and 32 neurology residents, and is currently supervising an F32 fellow in neuropsychology. Former trainees are on faculty at St. Louis University, Indiana University, University of Kansas, Boston University, University of Minnesota, University of North Texas, Case Western Reserve, Albany Medical Center, Massachusettes General Hospital, and Brown University. His expertise in geriatric assessment of functional, psychosocial, cognitive, and medical abilities will be an especially valuable resource for the fellow.
Stephen Salloway, MD, MS is a board certified neurologist and psychiatrist specializing in dementia research. He is the Director of the Butler Hospital Memory Disorders Program and a Professor of Clinical Neurosciences and Psychiatry at Brown Medical School. He is a nationally recognized expert on vascular dementia, subcortical microvascular disease in aging and neuropsychiatric aspects of Alzheimer’s disease. He has been the Principal Investigator on more than 20 investigator-initiated, NIH and industry-sponsored clinical trials for mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia and dementia with Lewy bodies. He has NIH support for his studies of microvascular changes in Alzheimer’s disease and late-life depression, genetic models of human dementia, and the CADASIL syndrome. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Brown MRI Research facility and is Co-Director of the Imaging Research Core for the Department of Psychiatry. Dr. Salloway has extensive experience teaching neuropsychiatry to trainees as Director of the Neuropsychiatry Track in the Psychiatry Residency and as Director of the medical school course on the Human Brain and Behavior.
Geoffrey Tremont, PhD is the Associate Director of the Neuropsychology and Memory and Cognitive Assessment Programs at Rhode Island Hospital and Assistant Professor in the Brown DPHB. He currently mentors interns and postdoctoral fellows in clinical and research neuropsychology. His research interests include the neurobehavioral effects of thyroid disorders, with recent work in thyroid and aging. He has received past grant funding for SPECT imaging and neuropsychological studies in thyroid disorders. In addition, Dr. Tremont has received an R21 grant involving the development of a novel telephone-based intervention for caregivers of individuals with dementia. Dr. Tremont has also developed a program of clinically relevant research examining important neuropsychological questions for dementia and other adult populations. Recent projects include estimating premorbid intellectual functioning, the effect of executive dysfunction on memory, and the relationship between orientation and memory.
Basic Science Faculty
Suzanne M. de la Monte, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine and Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and a faculty member in the Pathobiology Graduate program at Brown Medical School. Dr. de la Monte conducts research on molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration. The laboratory focuses on the role of aberrant expression of nitric oxide synthase 3 and neuronal thread protein in relation to apoptosis and degenerative neuritic sprouting in Alzheimer’s disease, as well as other important forms of neurodegeneration, utilizing both in vitro and in vivo models of gene transfer. A second major research effort is to understand the mechanisms of ethanol-induced neuronal apoptosis and impaired mitochondrial function. Using both the gene-induced and ethanol-induced models of neurodegeneration, the laboratory is engaged in identify novel neuroprotective compounds that could help rescue neurons from neurodegeneration. As an extension of this research, Dr. de la Monte’s laboratory is establishing transient hypoxia/ischemia experimental models that simulate adverse situations that can occur during cardiothoracic surgical procedures. The hypothesis is that oxidative injury can precipitate or propagate AD-type neurodegeneration, and therefore by preventing such damage, one could preserve cognitive function in the elderly.
Justin Fallon, PhD His research involves how synapses are formed and maintained, and how they are modified by experience to store new information. The creation of long-lasting synaptic modifications requires the synthesis of new proteins, many of which arise by the translation of mRNAs localized to synapses. He and his colleagues have discovered a novel molecular mechanism for the regulation of such local translation and are working to understand how this system works in learning and memory. Dr. Fallon has done pioneering work on agrin, which has proved very useful in identifying disturbances in the microvasculature in AD. He is the PI on the NIH project Genetic Models of Human Dementia and also the PI on a Program project grant studying translational control in synaptic plasticity.. His lab also studies the molecular basis of synapse formation and elimination using the highly tractable neuromuscular junction system. This research is being applied to Duchenne’s muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular disorders.
William Heindel, PhD is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Brown University. He is Director of Graduate Studies in Psychology as well as Undergraduate Concentration Advisor in Cognitive Neuroscience. Dr. Heindel serves on the Executive Committee of the Brown Brain Sciences Program, and on the Executive Committee of the Brown MRI Research Facility. Dr. Heindel is the Principal Investigator of a NIA-funded study of arousal, attention, and priming in Alzheimer’s Disease, and he has published extensively on topics concerned with the neuropsychology of memory and attention. Dr. Heindel is currently involved in a number of collaborative research projects with hospital-based faculty, including studies investigating the cognitive deficits associated with Alzheimer’s Disease and Parkinson’s disease. In addition to being Director of the Memory Research Lab in the Department of Psychology, Dr. Heindel is also Co-Director of a state-of–the-art EEG and ERP Imaging Facility specifically developed as a resource for training pre- and post-doctoral students in electrophysiological research techniques.
Jerome Sanes, PhD is Professor of Neuroscience at Brown. His research explores brain mechanisms that underlie voluntary movement and motor skill learning. He studies these problems with magnetic resonance technology that assesses focal changes in blood flow and by assessing movement patterns while humans perform various movement tasks. He has grant support from both NIA and NINDS for this research. He has been working in fMRI research for over 10 years, and was recently appointed as Director of the newly established Brown University Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility (see Resources section above).He also teaches the semester-long course BN0294: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Techniques.
John Sedivy, PhD is Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and Biochemistry and Director of the Center for Genetics and Genomics at Brown The Sedivy laboratory is funded by three major grants, including "Mechanisms of Replicative Senescence in Human Cells." The topic of this research project is the molecular mechanism of replicative aging processes, specifically, the molecular machine that actually executes and maintains senescence. The major tool is targeted homologous recombination (gene targeting), which is being performed in normal (nonimmortalized) human cell strains of both fibroblastic and epithelial origin. The objective is to ablate gene action and subsequently investigate the resultant senescence phenotypes on both the cellular and molecular levels. This direct interventive approach is expected to reveal the functionally relevant components of the molecular senescence machine. He has 50 peer-reviewed publications and serves on a number of scientific advisory committees.
Edward Stopa, MD is Associate Professor of Pathology and Pathobiology at Brown University and is Director of Neuropathology at the Rhode Island Hospital. Dr. Stopa is nationally recognized as an expert in the neurobiology of aging and is actively involved in neuropathology and neurology research at Brown. He has held 6 large NIH grants in the past 3 years; prior to his recent funding, Dr. Stopa received a Physician Scientist Award from the NIA. At present, Dr. Stopa serves as a study section member for the NIH Brain Disorders and Clinical Neuroscience division and is also a grant reviewer for the National Science Foundation. In addition to Dr. Stopa's federal funding, he is involved in the latest clinical trials research, serving as a research consultant to many of the major pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer and Glaxo Wellcome. He has published over 55 articles and trained over 15 academically-oriented residents.
Terrie (Fox) Wetle, PhD is Associate Dean of Medicine for Public Health & Public Policy, and Professor of Medical Sciences (Community Health) at Brown. She recently served as Deputy Director of the National Institute on Aging, and thus will be able to advise the Directors on NIA’s training philosophy and goals for researchers. She is the author of over 150 scholarly publications in aging and public policy, and has served on numerous national policy committees. She will be available to serve as a mentor in public policy and health services research and in research career development.
Dr. Marc Tatar is Assistant Professor of Biology. He works closely with Dr. Sedivy directing the Center for Genetics and Genomics at Brown, where he has established a national reputation in organismal aging research. He has won several research awards, including Graduate Award for Excellence in Gerontology, UC Davis, the American Federation of Aging Research Young Investigator Award, and the Ellison Medical Foundation New Scholar Award. He is currently the PI of an R01 grant to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms of candidate longevity assurance genes and determine their association with senescence, demographic and stress response phenotypes. He is also PI on three other major grants. He will give lectures in the Mechanisms of Dementia seminar and assist Dr. Sedivy in mentoring trainees.