Gabrielle Strobel, Executive Editor

Gabrielle Strobel takes a leadership role in all Alzforum activities. In particular, Strobel oversees editorial operations ranging from weekly research and drug news coverage to in-depth conference reporting, expert commentary, special features, and investigative reports. Strobel coordinates Webinar discussion topics and ARF interviews, co-organizes and moderates discussions at research conferences, and is the author of the annual Bar Harbor Report series. Most recently, she has written Early-Onset Familial AD, a unique and extensive resource on an understudied but important form of Alzheimer disease.

Peter Laivins joined the Alzheimer Research Forum in July 2010 to fill this newly created role. Previously, Peter was VP of Brand management at Elan Biopharmaceuticals. At Elan, he led the development of commercial strategy for the Alzheimer’s Immunotherapy Program, including its lead compound bapineuzumab, an immunotherapy in Phase 3 of clinical testing. In addition, he oversaw commercialization of the multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri (natalizumab), and pain therapy delivered into the spinal cord called Prialt (ziconitide).

Prior to Elan, Peter spent 20 years with Pfizer Inc. in various roles of ascending responsibility. Notable among those was leadership of U.S. Oncology Marketing, where he led the establishment of an oncology franchise. Peter launched Sutent (sunitinib), an oral receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor that has become a standard of care for renal cell carcinoma and some gastrointestinal tumors. At Pfizer, Peter also played a significant role in the launch of Aricept (donepezil) internationally. Subsequently, Peter became leader of U.S. Alzheimer’s Marketing, and it is in this role that he found his passion to help find a cure for this devastating disease.

At Alzforum, Peter will oversee the development of new projects that will help the Forum continue to realize its mission to accelerate and facilitate AD research. These are exciting times both in science and in Web technology. Peter will bring his conceptual and operational experience to bear to ensure that the Alzforum makes the most of new opportunities to enhance the user experience for the Alzforum community. To this end, Peter will reach out to many of our readers, as we depend on your insights and guidance along the way.

Peter is a graduate of McGill University (in his home town of Montréal, Québec, Canada), where he earned a bachelor of science in Immunology and Microbiology, and an MBA in Marketing and Corporate Policy. He lives in Rowayton, Connecticut, on the Long Island Sound, with his wife Donna, and two young sons, while his three older children are away at university.

Paula Noyes, Executive Producer

Paula Noyes first began working on the Alzheimer Research Forum web site in 1997 while working for the company that originally developed the site in 1996. Not long after she decided to go freelance, so did the Alzheimer Research Forum, and since then she's been working with the team in a variety of capacities to help produce the site.

At Alzforum, she works as part of the leadership team on strategic planning, project development and management and oversees the production team. She also manages relationships with various Alzforum collaborators and vendors.

Prior to joining Alzforum, she completed an undergraduate degree in literature and women's studies at the University of Minnesota and the University of Lancaster in England. After living in London for a spell, she returned to Minnesota where she taught writing for several years before pulling up roots once again and heading east. She completed graduate degrees in literature and cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh and in expressive arts therapy at Lesley University.

Tom Fagan, Acting Managing Editor

Tom Fagan is a science writer and editor with a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University College Dublin, Ireland. He has several years' experience as a researcher, first in Japan at Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company and Osaka Bioscience Institute, then at Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow and research associate.

Fagan waved goodbye to the bench in 2001 and started out on a new adventure—spending a summer working on Harvard Medical School's publication, Focus. From there he launched himself into his present writing career. Besides his prolific work at Alzforum, Fagan occasionally freelances for other publications, including the Schizophrenia Research Forum, foundations such as the International Osteoporosis Foundation, and other not-for-profits that support research on neurodegenerative diseases.

Esther Landhuis, Science Writer

Madolyn Rogers, who joined Alzforum in 2010, took a roundabout path before finding her calling as a science writer. She studied Spanish at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, graduating in 1992, and lived overseas for a year in Madrid and a year in The Netherlands. Returning to the States, she worked for several years as an administrative assistant for a small electric motor company in Florida. Needing more of a challenge, she went back to school to study biology at the University of South Florida, graduating in 2000.

Madolyn has always been fascinated by the brain. While working on a Ph.D. in developmental biology at Stanford School of Medicine, she studied neuronal growth factors and helped develop a method for isolating corticospinal motor neurons. She took neuroanatomy with the med students, and soaked up everything she could learn about the development and degeneration of the brain. She received a HHMI Predoctoral Fellowship and attended the Cold Spring Harbor Protein Purification Course. Halfway through her graduate studies, however, Madolyn realized she liked writing about science more than doing benchwork.

After graduating in 2007, she entered the University of California, Santa Cruz science communication program. She interned at the Stanford School of Medicine press office, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Santa Cruz Sentinel, as well as at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. After a stint freelancing and looking for the right job, Madolyn was delighted to become a part of Alzforum, where she combines her passions for writing and neuroscience.

Madolyn lives in a big house on a wooded hillside near Madison, Wisconsin, along with her husband, who is a clinical social worker, and a fireball of a little boy, who is in training to become either a Jedi knight or an astronaut (indications vary). She also lives with extended family and the occasional visiting bat or squirrel. Madolyn enjoys hiking, skiing, writing fantasy novels, and organizing practically anything.

Gwen Wong, Drug Database and AlzSWAN Curator

Gwen Wong has been a working molecular biologist for over 20 years. She has over 9 years' experience in pharmaceutical drug discovery in neurodegenerative diseases, specializing in using transgenic mice for high-throughput in vivo testing of small molecules, proteins, RNAi, gene therapy, and stem cells for Alzheimer disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Gwen established a high-throughput in vivo pharmacology program for Alzheimer disease drug discovery at Schering-Plough, Kenilworth, New Jersey. This involved extensive in vivo compound screening including acute assays to measure efficacy in γ- and β-secretase inhibition of Aβ as well as toxicity analysis in chronically dosed mice for Alzheimer Disease drug discovery. She also directed in vivo pharmacology at a nonprofit independent research facility ASL Therapy Development Foundation in Cambridge MA. Gwen received her Ph.D. working with Elizabeth Lacy, co-discoverer of the microinjection technique to generate transgenic mice. With Bob Margolskee at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Roche Institute of Molecular Biology, Gwen generated mice that could not taste bitter substances using gene knockout techniques. Gwen has worked in the molecular biology fields of T cell immunology, taste reception, and neurodegeneration, and her first love in science is mouse molecular genetics and the application of mice in medicine.

Gwen is the curator of Drugs in Clinical Trials and AlzSWAN knowledge base. It is a welcome and refreshing change to write about exciting science discoveries and developments and not worry about Materials and Methods sections, or to have to dose mice every 8 hours! When not thinking or writing about Alzheimer disease, Gwen is with her kids, her husband Mark Labow of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, in the garden or in the kitchen. Gwen loves to play squash and swim, and is an avid reader of everything.

Don Hatfield, Antibody Database Curator

Don Hatfield loves to dive headlong into freshly fallen piles of information. Graduated from MIT in History and Mathematics, graduate study in Film and Materials Science. He has publications in the areas of computer systems analysis, computer graphics and programming languages and has played with computers at the IBM Cambridge Scientific Center and Cambridge Graphics/Visualization Center from 1965 to 1992. In 1965 implemented the first relational database within IBM, an interface between a 3D graphics model (3D Sketchpad) and a properties database, and helped the relational database eventually become IBM's relational database product. Founded and was first Chairman of SIGMOD, the ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data, and worked with members of the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, then directed by Dr. Joseph Licklider, on the problems of self describing data sets (currently addressed through XMLs) within the Arpanet (later to evolve into the Internet).

At IBM he worked jointly with Dr. Alexander Rich's Lab of the MIT Biology department on computer programs to analyze X-ray diffraction data so as to capture 3D molecular structure, and programs to display the results. The analysis programs were used in the determination of the 3D structure of Transfer RNA, by S.H. Kim, et al. He attempted sporadically to crystallize Ribosomes, with complete lack of success, for an extremely tolerant Dr. Rich. Don Hatfield introduced within IBM the concept of Wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) data handling and programming. He served as internal consultant to IBM’s product divisions on document processing, graphic user interfaces and high resolution anti-aliased text and graphics software. He developed first efficient, high resolution algorithm for antialiasing homogeneous-form polynomials (described in Foley, van Dam, et al.) and he designed prototype for Wysiwyg math as a programming language for Image Processing applications, for the ANSI Image Processing API. More recently, he co-founded a company to build Wysiwyg editors for MathML and other XMLs.

Hatfield was part of the Alzheimer Research Forum from the time of its launch, and in 1997 began building the Forum's Antibody Database, and acting as a utility antibody finder for researchers who ask. His other current interests include the following: an XML for antibody data-sheets, the relation between early stages of Alzheimer Disease and neonatal development, MathML extended as a Web programming Language, European History and its Evolution as a Web database; building American Federal Period furniture, and tennis. He and his wife and daughter live in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Sandy Kirley, Database Curator

Since joining the ARF team in the summer of 2002, Sandy Kirley has been updating the Antibody Database, the Papers of the Week Annotations, as well as responding to "Desperately Seeking Antibodies." She has also been involved in updating the Research Model database. Sandy graduated from Merrimack College with a degree in biology and chemistry. Her laboratory experience includes protein purification, antibody production, and immunological staining to developing mouse embryo cell lines. She is a coauthor on over 20 journal articles and has done research at the Jimmy Fund and Tufts New England Medical Center. She is currently at Massachusetts General Hospital in the research laboratory of the Urology and Pathology Departments.

She enjoys working on the ARF team which she considers an important contribution to a significant health issue. When not working she spends her time in Andover with her husband, Jim, and their loveable cat, Kleo.

Nico Stanculescu, Event Coordinator

Nico Stanculescu jokingly refers to herself as "Diagonally Parked in a Parallel World" though truthfully admitting she just doesn't know how to parallel park. But with an instinct for networking and making things happen, Nico finds the right people to park cars, play music, cater events or set up exhibit booths. It's all—according to her—in the foundation of win-win and interdependence within a team.

And where did ARF meet Nico? It all happened while working for the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago, where she managed research grants operations. There, she had completely redesigned operational structures and managed the transition from paper to electronic grant application submission and review. From producing events for several hundreds of people to organizing live discussions for the Forum, Nico approaches each project with a can-do attitude and desire to make each project a big success.

After 15 years of dedicated service to the Alzforum, June Kinoshita has stepped down as Executive Editor. The Alzforum team is deeply grateful for June’s vision, leadership, and hard work over all these years. We are fortunate to be able to keep tapping June’s prodigious mind while she continues in an advisory role.