Mark Tuszynski is a Professor of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, and the Founding Director of the UCSD Translational Neuroscience Institute. He received his undergraduate and M.D. degrees from the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis), clinical training in neurology at Cornell University Medical Center in New York, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Tuszynski’s research focuses on central nervous system plasticity in animal models of learning, Alzheimer’s disease and spinal cord injury. He investigates nervous system stem cells, growth factors and tools of gene delivery in many of these studies. In 2001, Dr. Tuszynski began the first human clinical trial of gene therapy to treat an adult human neurodegenerative disease, testing the effects of nerve growth factor gene delivery in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease. He has won 15 research awards and is the author of over 180 scientific and medical publications.