Adding to its impressive roster of many of the nation’s leading scientists, the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund Research Consortium is pleased to announce its two newest members, Eric Schadt, Ph.D. (left), and Rick Huganir, Ph.D. (right).

The Research Consortium develops and updates a “roadmap for research” for the most effective and efficient route to slowing, stopping and/or reversing Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia. Members research their own projects and recruit others whose work will hasten the development of effective therapies.

“We are very excited about the prospect of working with these two truly outstanding scientists in our quest to conquer Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, consortium chair and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Harvard Medical School.

Eric Schadt, Ph.D., is director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology and chair of the Department of Genetics and Genomics Sciences. He is also a professor of genomics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

Dr. Schadt is an expert in generating and integrating large-scale sequence variation, molecular profiling and using clinical data from disease populations to construct molecular networks that define disease states and link molecular biology to physiology. Dr. Schadt’s research has provided key insights into what is needed to master large-scale, diverse data collection to better understand diseases and to improve treatment options.  He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed papers in leading scientific journals, and contributed to a number of discoveries related to the genetic basis of such common human disorders as diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s disease.

Richard L. Huganir, Ph.D., is a professor and director of the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience and an investigator with Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Huganir’s groundbreaking research on the mechanisms of communication between neurons in the brain earned him great recognition in the neuroscience community. He also has received the Young Investigator Award and the Julius Axelrod Award from the Society for Neuroscience. He has published more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals.