Julie Harris, Ph.D.

Executive Vice President of Research Management

Julie joined Cure Alzheimer’s Fund in May of 2023 as the Vice President of Research Management and was promoted to Executive Vice President effective October 2023. Julie was previously the Vice President of Preclinical Biology at Cajal Neuroscience, a biotech startup in Seattle WA focused on identifying novel therapies for neurodegenerative diseases. At Cajal, she assembled and led a team with diverse scientific and technical expertise to build a comprehensive platform for target discovery, integrating functional genomics, translational disease models, and cutting-edge whole brain imaging techniques.

Prior to joining Cajal, Julie spent 10 years at the Allen Institute for Brain Science where she was the Associate Director of Neuroanatomy. Julie led seminal efforts to build several foundational, high impact, open science resources, including the creation of the Allen mouse brain connectome and the Allen 3D mouse brain reference atlas. Her team at the Allen Institute was also responsible for employing whole brain microscopy and transcriptomics in Alzheimer’s mouse models to characterize molecular, cellular, and circuit patterns of disease.

Julie received a B.S. in Zoology from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. in Neurobiology and Behavior from the University of Washington. She trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institute for Neurological Disease in San Francisco, CA.