The idea for the Alzheimer Research Forum website was born over a dinner conversation in late 1995, and became a reality with the site's official launch in 1996 at the 5th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders, in Osaka, Japan. The site has since grown into the preeminent Web community for AD researchers. Kinoshita oversees the editorial and technological development of the site.

As a journalist, Kinoshita has published hundreds of articles on a wide range of scientific subjects for such national publications as the New York Times Magazine, Science, Scientific American, Allure, American Health, New York Times Book Review, Technology Review, Longevity and Newsweek. She was also Science Consultant on the nationally televised series on women in science, Discovering Women, produced by WGBH in Boston, and Script Developer and Science Editor of The Secret Life of the Brain, a five-part film on neuroscience, produced by David Grubin Productions and WNET in New York City (February 2002); and Science Editor of The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer's, produced by Twin City Television (February 2004).

Kinoshita served as international editor of Scientific American magazine, where she specialized in the neurosciences and edited articles written by some of the nation's leading brain researchers. She also became the first staff editor to publish a full-length article in the magazine, a report on the Voyager II fly-by of Neptune from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Kinoshita consulted to Science, one of the most respected and widely read professional scientific journals in the world. At Science, she spearheaded the journal's business development and news coverage of scientific research in Asia, and produced several special issues on science in Japan, China and the Asian "Tigers."

Graduated from Harvard University in 1980, where she majored in physics, Kinoshita has garnered an international reputation for her meticulous, in-depth reporting on complex scientific topics. She has been awarded many prestigious prizes and fellowships, including the M.I.T. Knight Science Journalism Fellowship, an award of excellence by the American Medical Writer's Association, and Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory's science writing fellowship. Her work has also been featured on NBC's Today Show. Kinoshita is also the author of a guidebook, Gateway to Japan (Kodansha International, 1990, 1993, 1998), and was a consultant on the feature film Black Rain, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michael Douglas.

Kinoshita lives on an antique farm in Waltham, Massachusetts, with her husband, Tod Machover, a composer and professor at the M.I.T. Media Laboratory. They have two daughters and a growing menagerie of felines, rabbits, Japanese koi and overwhelming numbers of varmints and weeds.

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.

She did her 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 did a graduate degree in education and taught writing for several years before pulling up roots once again and heading east. She did graduate degrees in literature and cultural studies at the University of Pittsburgh and in expressive arts therapy at Lesley University.

Other work includes producing the web site for Yin Yu Tang, a late Qing dynasty home brought over from a small village in China. She also consults for Memory Bridge, The Foundation for Alzheimer's and Cultural Memory.

More recently, Strobel authored Research Funding in Neuroscience—A Profile of the McKnight Endowment Fund, Academic Press, 2007.

At Alzforum, Strobel coordinates the weekly news coverage, live discussion topics, and ARF interviews. Strobel co-organizes and moderates discussions at research conferences, and covers conference news extensively. Strobel 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.

Strobel graduated with a master's degree in neuroscience from the University of Konstanz in Germany in 1991, with a prior stint at the Friedrich Miescher Institute of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen and a graduate exchange year in the Neuroscience program at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 1992, she came to San Francisco with a backpack, story ideas, and plans to stay for a year or two. Many years later, her exit strategy hasn't panned out, and she is now firmly rooted in Dover, Massachusetts, with a scientist-husband, three children, a house, a treehouse, and two cats.

Elizabeth Wu, Knowledge Management Consultant

Elizabeth Wu has been involved in the development with ARF since its inception. She is now the Knowledge Management Consultant for the site focusing upon the search, retrieval, and organization of the site's content. She is also responsible for creating and updating the search strategies behind the Papers of the Week, and for maintaining the genes, drugs, library, and research tools sections of the site.

She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong majoring in Biology and Biochemistry. While pondering her future as a research scientist, she spent a couple of years working as a research assistant in the medical school there. Soon, she was drawn to the systems behind the organization and retrieval of scientific information and pursued her master's degree in library and information science at the University of Wisconsin. That marked the beginning of her career as a medical librarian specializing in technology applications.

Passionate about her continuous quest for improving scientific communication, Elizabeth pioneered the use of new technology in the organization and delivery of information and knowledge in the biomedical field. While working at the Harvard Medical School Library, she developed the Harvard Medical Web in early 1994. The web site served as a catalyst within the Harvard Medical community, and spawned a number of departmental and programmatic web sites, many of which she helped launch. These sites represent a wide range of innovative implementations such as clinical case studies, a brain image library, and electronic journals.

She feels fortunate to work with a dedicated, creative, and energetic team of professionals who share the same vision in improving scientific communication for the Alzheimer's disease research community. She believes much more could be done for the community and looks forward to developing new ideas for how the site might help achieve this goal.

Fagan is no stranger to adventure. He holds a black belt in karate, has raced his road bike to some of the highest mountaintops in the Japanese Alps (taking a fair number of prizes in the process), has been inducted into the Cape Horn Association for rounding that notorious cape under sail, and is one of the very (mad) few who have sailed in the Southern Ocean, braving its roiling storms and contrary winds for 30 days during leg three of the BT Challenge Round the World Yacht Race. When not chasing some new adventure, he relaxes in Stow, Massachusetts, with his wife Elaine, an artist and writer, and their twin cats Bustopher and Bounderby.

Pat McCaffrey, Science Writer

Pat McCaffrey is a freelance science writer specializing in biology and medicine. After earning an MS in Nutritional Biochemistry and a PhD in Applied Biology from MIT, Pat spent nearly 20 years doing research on cancer and immunology. Her research took her from Cambridge to Japan, where she lived and worked for two years. Then, it was back to Boston and positions at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Vertex Pharmaceuticals. While at Vertex, Pat got a crash course in neurobiology when she was tapped to lead the company's fledgling neurodegenerative disease program.

Call it an early mid-life crisis, or simply the need to see her children before 7 pm every evening, but in 2001 Pat decided to abandon the life of a corporate scientist and pursue her childhood dream of being a writer. During an internship at the Harvard Medical School publications office, she met Tom Fagan, who introduced her to the Alzforum gang.

So, for the next 20 years (at least), Pat plans to happily write about whatever topics come her way, with a special interest in oncology and neurological disease. In addition to writing for Alzforum, she freelances for Harvard Medical School and Yale Medical School. She is a regular contributor to the Lancet Oncology, and recently began to write for the Lancet Neurology journal.

Pat lives in Newton, MA, with her husband, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Above all, she treasures their summers in Rhode Island and any opportunity to wander the world with their three much-too-rapidly growing children.

Joining Alzforum in 2008 marked Esther Landhuis's third career shift in five years. While working on a Ph.D. in immunology at Harvard, Esther realized that her knack for putting science into words outshone her motivation to find insight within the hundreds of mouse spleens and thymuses she was mashing. So after much soul-searching and the completion of her doctorate in 2003, she entered the UC Santa Cruz Science Communication Program—a nine-month boot camp that turns science practitioners into science writers.

While at UCSC, Esther interned at the city's daily paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, and wrote science stories for Stanford News Service and Science magazine's former website on research in aging, SAGE KE. She then did a yearlong internship at the San Jose Mercury News, covering science and health. After several months as a freelance writer (SAGE KE, ScienceNOW, Biomedical Computation Review), the birth of a baby—and another one 18 months later—thrust Esther into her most challenging job thus far: stay-at-home mom. Changing diapers, enduring tantrums and wondering when and how she would ever resume her science writing adventures, she decided the Alzforum opportunity could not have come at a better time.

Esther lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, who is a physicist-turned-engineering project manager, and their two children—a chatty lass and her fearless brother. She enjoys classical and folk music, shopping on craigslist, watching Boston and Stanford sports teams, and good conversation over tea. Esther considers herself an initiator, organizer, and pursuer of truth.

Amber Dance, Science Writer

Amber Dance joined Alzforum in 2008 soon after completing her scientist-to-writer transition. She majored in biology at Brown University, graduating in 2002, and earned her Ph.D. in 2007 at UC San Diego. In graduate school, she wanted to spend as much time as possible peering through the microscope and taking pretty pictures of cells. That interest led her to projects in intracellular trafficking in mammalian cells and sporulation in bacteria. At UCSD, she received an HHMI Predoctoral Fellowship and also attended the Woods Hole Physiology Course in 2004. In 2006 she received the Biology Department's Excellence in Teaching Award.

But her interests were much broader than a single research project, and she turned to journalism as a way to learn about all kinds of science, and then share her excitement with others. Writing also satisfies the right side of her brain, which demands a creative outlet. At the UC Santa Cruz science communication program she honed her skills in relaying research to readers. At UCSC she received a Cary Lu Memorial Fellowship to support her studies.

Amber interned at the Los Angeles Times and San Jose Mercury News. She also worked at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and for QUEST, a public broadcast program about San Francisco Bay area science. Following a summer 2008 stint at Nature's Washington, DC, office, she began freelancing. She was thrilled to become a part of Alzforum, where she focuses on ALS and related neurodegenerative diseases. Her work is funded by Prize4Life, a nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the identification of treatments and a cure for ALS.

Amber lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, a physicist, and a thoroughly spoiled cat called Nutball. She enjoys hiking as well as homey activities such as cooking and knitting. She also loves to travel, and likes planning the itineraries almost as much as she enjoys the actual trip. To encourage young people with an interest in science, she volunteers as an online "expert" with Science Buddies, answering questions from students working on science fair projects.

Nico grew up in East Africa, lived in Europe for 15 years, and traveled extensively in Asia. She now lives in Chicago and owns a meeting and event planning company, World Events Forum, Inc..

C Knep, Senior Web Developer/Designer

C Knep joined the Alzheimer Research Forum after having worked as a freelance web developer and designer, multimedia developer, the Manager of Web Services of Interland, Inc, and a software localization engineer. He has 18+ years of experience in Information Technologies.

He consults at the highest technical level with the Executive Editor and Executive Producer in determining the overall information systems strategy for the Alzforum website. This position requires identifying the long-term information technology needs of the organization and developing the necessary supporting strategies, including systems development, and integration of all information systems.

The Senior Web Developer is responsible for managing all web development that occurs on the Alzforum website. This includes the supervision of junior developers. Working closely with editors, producers, project managers, science writers, data curators, and Alzheimer researchers, the Senior Web Developer designs, develops, and maintains production-quality, data-driven, front and back-end web applications using the latest technologies including ASP.NET, C#, XML/XSL, HTML, CSS, AJAX, Javascript, T-SQL, ASP Classic, and VBScript. The role of the Senior Web Developer includes the responsibilities of manager, web developer, web designer, database developer, system administrator, and QA tester.

Elaine Alibrandi, Developmental/Copy Editor and Production Assistant

As a developmental and copy editor, Elaine Alibrandi loves to play "Spot the Error," an annoying habit she decided several years ago to transform into a useful service, in addition to using her skills in Web production. She is related to the ARF by marriage—to Tom Fagan (see above). Theirs is primarily a merging of science and art; Elaine is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, and exhibits her oil/mixed media paintings at galleries around the country. (See Paintings.)

After college, she worked as a freelance designer for such clients as Legal Seafood, The Players Club, Turtle Lane Playhouse, Shawmut Bank, and the Boston Repertory Theatre. Although the work was interesting, she was dissatisfied with having marketing take precedence over creativity, as it must in commercial design. After a brief detour, during which one of her clients held her hostage for several years in its commercial finance department, she escaped to pursue her freelance editing and writing, which offer hours flexible enough for her to focus on her art.

Elaine holds a black belt in karate from the Japan Karate Association in Brookline. Her creative writing has been published extensively in literary journals and poetry magazines.

Hakon Heimer worked as a free-lance writer/editor specializing in neuroscience and related clinical specialties for ARF until 2005, when he became Executive Editor of the Schizophrenia Research Forum.