D. Stephen Snyder, Ph.D.

Retired Deputy Director, National Institute on Aging Division of Neuroscience


Stephen Snyder, Ph.D. received a BS in Biology from Loyola College in Baltimore, MD and an MS in Cell Biology from Adelphi University, Long Island, New York.  After college, he worked for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, first in the Department of Renal Medicine and later, after graduate school, in the Department of Allergy and Immunology. Dr. Snyder earned his doctorate degree in Pathology (concentration in neuropathology) from the Sue Golding Graduate Division of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York. His post-doctoral research, conducted at the University of Tennessee and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Memphis (Dept. of Neurology and the VA Research Service), focused on the possible role of lysosomal enzymes within CNS myelin-forming cells in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis.  His independent research at the VAMC was focused more broadly on glial cell metabolism and on peripheral nerve degeneration in animal models.

Late in 1990, he joined the National Institute on Aging (NIA) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH, Bethesda, MD) to manage a growing portfolio of neuroscience focused on the Neurobiology of Aging. Later, he became the director of the NIA’s program on the Etiology of Alzheimer’s Disease and managed its growth and development for fifteen years. In 2009 he became the Deputy Director of the Division of Neuroscience (NIA) and served in that capacity for four years. For twenty-one months just prior to his retirement from the NIH, he served as both the Deputy and Acting Director of the Division of Neuroscience, NIA, NIH.