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Alzheimer Research Forum Awards for 2006
Posted 4 November 2009
 Sam Gandy, Thomas Jefferson University, Outstanding Contributor, for his leadership in proposing and leading the live discussion Not Dead Yet: Estrogen Deserves Another Chance.
Minji Kim, Alice Lu, and Rudy Tanzi of Massachusetts General Hospital, Outstanding Contributors, for composing the detailed eight-part summary of the Keystone Symposia early in 2006:
Tobias Hartmann, University of the Saarland, Outstanding Contributor, for his thoughtful commentaries and for generously contributing his time and ideas to guiding Alzforum. See, for example, his comment on the news story AβPP Processing—Limping Along on Lipases.
Nikolaos Robakis, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Outstanding Contributor, for long-time involvement on the Alzforum as an advisor, commentator, and critic who has fearlessly poked holes in the amyloid cascade hypothesis and championed the scientific underdogs. See, for example, Alzheimer Research Forum's 10th Anniversary Symposium: Mapping the Next Decade of Alzheimer Research.
John Morris, Washington University St. Louis, merited the Mensch Award for selflessly providing much valuable advice and participation in live discussions and interviews, and for posting the Antecedent Biomarkers for AD workshop proceedings. See interview.
Dean Hartley, Rush University Medical Center, received the Vision Award 2006 for being one of our earliest and most creative alpha testers, whose suggestions over the years have led to countless improvements of the Alzforum, including the Antibody Directory. He has also been deeply involved in the creation of SWAN (Semantic Web Applications in Neuromedicine), an innovative knowledge management technology that ARF members will be hearing more about next year....
Alzheimer Research Forum Awards for 2005
Posted 28 November 2005
This year's awards (2005) were presented to six scientists who have made outstanding contributions to the AD community through their commentaries and participation on the Alzforum website. The awards were announced by Executive Editor June Kinoshita at the Alzheimer disease social at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, DC. Gunnar Gouras of the Cornell-Weill College of Medicine was recognized for his courageous commentaries advocating a possible role for intraneuronal Aß in AD. RIKEN's Takaomi Saido won kudos for his prolific and astute selection of citations from Papers of the Week. Stem cell biologist Mahendra Rao was lauded for contributing an outside perspective to the AD field. Mouse developmental geneticist Carol Linder, who until recently oversaw the AD mouse model importation program at the Jackson Laboratory, received an award in appreciation for advising Alzforum on the research models directory. George Martin of Washington University in Seattle and John Trojanowski of the University of Pennsylvania won kudos not only for prolific commentaries and participation in live forums, but also for their energetic advocacy of the Alzforum mission.
Alzheimer Research Forum Awards for 2004
Posted 3 February 2005
The Massachusetts General Hospital team that masterminded the AlzGene
was the hands-down choice for the Community Award. Rudy Tanzi accepted
the award on behalf of his colleagues, who included Matthew McQueen,
Kristina Mullin, Deborah Blacker and above all Lars Bertram, the
indefatigable and passionate force behind the AlzGene database.
Scheduled to be completed by mid-2005, the AlzGene has already won wide
praise from geneticists across the board. We salute the hard work and
vision of Lars and his colleagues in creating this fantastic resource
and invite our readers to keep checking it out!
Mark Cookson, from the National Institute on Aging, Bethesda, MD, won the
Outstanding Contributor award for his numerous comments and insight into
developments in Parkinson disease and RNAi therapeutic strategies. Mark
is
always so willing to share his thoughts and analysis that we have to
restrain ourselves from calling on him too frequently.
Similarly, the Alzforum team can always count on Li-Huei Tsai, of
Harvard
Medical School, to explain the significance and hidden tie-ins of
studies
pertaining to the kinase cdk5 and its role in neurodegeneration. Her
comments shine with astute observations and pointers to important new
questions. Li-Huei won an Outstanding Contributor Award for raising the
community's awareness of the role of cdk5 and related commentary.
Last but hardly least, the Alzforum editors were pleased to recognize
Yong Shen as an Outstanding Contributor for his off-line discussion
forum on "Cell Death: Time to Push it out of the Doldrums."
Yong's concise overview elicited a wealth of commentaries from
colleagues for a busy two weeks during the summer and provided Alzforum
readers with a superb discussion about the importance of cell death
relative to other processes in Alzheimer disease.
Alzheimer Research Forum Awards for 2003
Posted 10 December 2003
Rachael Neve of the McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA, was awarded the
Innovation Award this year for her pioneering and meticulous pursuit of
the APP C-terminus fragment as a key player in Alzheimer pathogenesis,
as well as her contributions to research on the cell cycle in AD, and
most recently the possible role of PPARg in that. "We applaud Rachel
for her courage in putting forth original alternative explanations, for
broadening the field's view, and for being so open and generous with
her data," stated Alzforum's managing editor Gabrielle Strobel at the
award presentation ceremony held at the Society for Neuroscience annual
meeting in November. Dr. Neve has participated on the Alzforum web site
as a commentator, moderator of the Live Discussion, "Are Neurons Just
Too Laissez-Faire about Repair?", and principal participant in Live
Discussion on "Alzheimer's disease: a re-examination of the amyloid
hypothesis." Learn more about Dr. Neve by reading our Interview with
her.
Vincent Marchesi, a member of the ARF's scientific advisory board and
Director of the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine at Yale, was
recognized as an Outstanding Contributor for his tireless and astute
critiques. (See our interview with him.) Two other past and present
advisory board members also received Outstanding Contributor Awards:
Fred Van Leuven of K.U. Leuven in Belgium, for his numerous
commentaries and advice, particularly on the development of the
Research Models resource, and
Bart DeStrooper, also of the K.U. Leuven,
for his numerous commentaries and wonderful meeting reports, such as
the Lake Titsee meeting summary he co-wrote with Philipp Kahle.
Last but hardly least, Dennis Selkoe and George Perry received Mensch
Awards for their long-time behind-the-scenes support for the web site.
The Alzheimer Research Forum is grateful to Dr. Selkoe for keeping us
updated on the amyloid cascade hypothesis, his interviews (in 1999 and
2003), and for encouraging many up and coming scientists such as
Dominic Walsh, Malcolm Leissring, Dean Hartley and Michael Wolfe to
become active members. Dr. Perry has also encouraged many colleagues to
become commentators and has been instrumental in publishing transcripts
of the Live Discussions in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
A great big thank you to all of our awardees this year!
Alzheimer Research Forum Awards 2002
Posted 11 December 2002
The Innovation Award was given to Inez Vincent for her authoritative
review of cell cycle genes in AD (see "The Cell Cycle and AD-Let's Unite
for Division"). Outstanding Contributor Awards were given to Todd Golde,
David Holtzman and Dominic Walsh. Golde was cited for his superb review
of γ-secretase (see "Presenilin-Guilty of Proteolysis by
Association?"). Holtzman, a member of the scientific advisory
board 2002, was recognized for his numerous commentaries and exceptionally
active role. Walsh received the recognition for his excellent meeting
reports and other contributions to the site (see for example "The
Presenilin Signaling Hub: A RIP-off or the Real Deal?").
A special category, the Mensch Award, was created to honor two original
members of the scientific advisory board, Paul Coleman and Peter Davies,
who have remained prolific contributors to the Alzheimer Research Forum.
Posted 22 January 2002
Alzheimer Research Forum Awards 2001
Five scientists were recognized at the Society for Neuroscience meeting
in November 2001 for outstanding contributions to the Alzheimer Research
Forum web site. The awards singled out individuals who volunteered
significant effort in creating scientific content for the benefit of the
research community. "Our mission is to create a web resource that will
speed the dissemination of data and ideas, and create an online
scientific community that can work more effectively towards finding
cures for this terrible disease," says June Kinoshita, founder and
Executive Editor of the web site. "We depend on scientists
for much of our cutting-edge content, and we think the community should
recognize the immensely valuable service that has been provided to them
by our award winners."
The Outstanding Contributor Award was presented to Richard Crook of Mayo
Clinic, Jacksonville, who compiled the complete list of mutations in
amyloid-beta precursor protein, presenilin-1, presenilin-2. In addition
to gathering all published mutations and primary references, he created
diagrams of both genes depicting all of the mutations.
The presenilin mutation directories are the most comprehensive and up-to-date list
available in the world, and as such, rapidly established themselves as
the standard reference for other researchers. John Hardy, also of Mayo
Clinic, Jacksonville, received a Merit Award for co-authoring with
Richard Crook the presenilin and
APP mutation directories.
The Innovation Award was presented to Keith Crutcher of the University
of Cincinnati for his abstract, "The Role Of ApoE Neurotoxicity In
Alzheimer's Neuropathology." The work was cited for its iconoclastic
hypothesis of a toxic role by the E4 allele. Since the publication of
the abstract, data has been reported by other researchers to support
this idea. The award also cited the importance of the hypothesis in
opening up avenues of investigation that could lead to entirely novel
drug targets. The Innovation Award is accompanied by a $5,000 travel grant.
Ben Wolozin of Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine and
Jennifer Kwon of the University of Washington, St. Louis, also receive
Merit Awards. Dr. Wolozin received the award for his timely commentaries
on a wide range of topics, most recently on α-synuclein and
transgenic models. Dr. Kwon was recognized for her role in creating the
Tau Mutation Directory. The directory compiles data on all known FTDP-17
mutations and allows for comparative analysis of the biochemical
effects, clinical and pathological phenotypes associated with each mutation.
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