Stacie Weninger, President

Stacie Weninger is the president of FBRI. Prior to this position, she was the senior director of science programs for the Fidelity Foundations. In 2005, Dr. Weninger served as the project manager and senior analyst for the Task Force on Women in Science at Harvard University. From 2001–2005, Dr. Weninger was a senior scientist at Cell Press for the journal Neuron. Before joining Cell Press, Dr. Weninger was a postdoctoral research fellow at Children’s Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School with Dr. Bruce Yankner. She was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute predoctoral fellow in the program in neuroscience at Harvard University. While a graduate student and postdoctoral research fellow, Dr. Weninger was actively involved in undergraduate teaching, winning six teaching awards.

Dr. Weninger received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard University, and a B.S. degree in chemistry with highest honors from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She currently chairs the Collaboration for Alzheimer’s Prevention; is president of Alzforum; chairs the board of directors for Rugen Therapeutics; serves on the boards of directors for Aratome, Atalanta, Eikonizo, RBNC, Sironax, and Target ALS; and serves as a member of the scientific advisory boards for the Indian Institute of Science’s Centre for Brain Research and the U.K. Dementia Research Institute. She is also a member of Pfizer’s genetics scientific advisory panel. She previously served as a founding member of the board of directors for Denali Therapeutics (NASDAQ: DNLI); as well as a member of the board of directors for Abelian (acquired by RBNC), Annexon Biosciences (NASDAQ: ANNX), BRI-Alzan (acquired by MeiraGTx), Digital Cognition Technologies (acquired by Linus Health), Enspectra, Inscopix, Syllable Life Sciences (acquired by RBNC), and Q-State Biosciences.

Gabrielle Strobel, Executive Editor

Gabrielle Strobel oversees Alzforum's editorial operations, including research and conference reporting, expert commentary, and webinar discussions. She initiated the AlzBiomarkers database and curates the Therapeutics database. 

Gabrielle joined Alzforum in 2001 after five years as a science writer at Harvard Medical School. Prior to that, she freelanced in English and German for national newspapers and magazines in Europe, Japan, and the United States. Gabrielle trained in science journalism at Stanford University and the D.C.-based magazine Science News. She graduated in 1991 with a master's degree in neuroscience from the University of Konstanz in Germany, with prior stints at the Friedrich Miescher Institute of the Max Planck Society in Tuebingen and the neuroscience program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Gabrielle serves on the Alzheimer's Prevention Registry Executive Committee and the SyNergy Munich Cluster for Systems Neurology Scientific Advisory Board. She is a fellow of the National Press Foundation, author of Research Funding in Neuroscience: A Profile of the McKnight Endowment Fund, Academic Press, 2007, and scientific adviser for the 2016 Nova documentary Can Alzheimer’s Be Stopped?

Elizabeth Wu, Director of Innovation Development

Elizabeth is responsible for managing and directing the processes of innovation and strategy development for Alzforum. By monitoring both the online industry and the changing needs of the scientific community, she helps develop creative solutions to advance scientific research. She leads the planning and development of new projects and resources, and manages the production, curation, and technology aspects of the site.

Elizabeth has been with Alzforum since its inception. She previously worked at the Harvard Medical School Library, where she helped develop and launch the Harvard Medical Web and many other sites. She graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with degrees in Biology and Biochemistry, and completed her master's degree in library and information science at the University of Wisconsin.

Tom Fagan, Managing Editor

Tom Fagan is a science editor and writer 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.

Never one to shy away from a new adventure, Tom waved goodbye to the bench in 2001 and launched himself into his present career. After a stint at Harvard Medical School's publication, Focus, Tom joined the editorial team at Alzforum later that year. He has served as Managing Editor since 2011.

Madolyn Bowman Rogers, Science Writer

Madolyn Bowman Rogers, who reports from Wisconsin, joined Alzforum in 2010. Madolyn inherited her interest in the brain, as well as a love of words, from her neuroscientist father. She first earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then majored in biology at the University of South Florida. From there she went on to Stanford School of Medicine, where she studied developmental neurobiology. After earning her Ph.D. in 2007, she again returned to the world of words and completed the science communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before joining the Alzforum team, Madolyn interned at the Stanford School of Medicine press office, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute.

Jessica Shugart, Science Writer

Jessica Shugart joined Alzforum in 2014. She became captivated by the immune system as an undergraduate at UC San Diego and dove in deeper as a graduate student at UC Berkeley. After earning her PhD in 2007, Jessica studied T cell activation as a postdoc at the Earle A. Chiles Research Institute in Portland, Oregon. In 2012, Jessica realized she loved telling the tales of science more than doing experiments, so she left the bench and put herself through the rigors of the science communication program at UC Santa Cruz. Jessica has written for the Stanford University School of Medicine, the Monterey Herald, the San Jose Mercury News, and most recently Science News in Washington, D.C. She reports from Chico in northern California.

Chelsea Weidman Burke, Science Writer

Chelsea Weidman Burke joined Alzforum in 2020. After earning her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in 2015, she enrolled in a chemical biology Ph.D. program at Boston College. Chelsea quickly realized that she enjoyed reading, writing, and explaining science more than performing experiments. While keeping a chemist’s hunger for detail, she found herself drawn to learn about infectious diseases, the immune system, and neurodegenerative diseases, especially after watching her grandmother be affected by dementia. Chelsea changed tacks, graduated with a master’s degree in chemical biology instead, and started out as a freelance science writer. She has written for BioSpace, BrightFocus Foundation, Massive Science, and Harvard University’s Science in the News. Prior to joining Alzforum, Chelsea was a clinical study coordinator and laboratory technician in the microbiology and immunology department at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) in South Carolina, from 2018–2020. There, she helped run a clinical study on osteopathic manipulative treatments for sinus infection.

Kathleen Zahs, Biocuration Scientist

Kathy Zahs joined Alzforum in 2017, after being a devoted member for more than a decade. She is responsible for the ongoing curation of Alzforum’s scientific databases and directories. Kathy received her A.B. in biology from Princeton and her Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied central nervous system development and plasticity before moving to the emerging field of glial cell biology. As a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, Kathy conducted research in glial biology and taught neuroscience . A desire to work on problems directly related to human health led to her joining the N. Bud Grossman Center for Memory Research and Care, where she researched the molecular basis of memory loss in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease. Her goal at Alzforum is to provide accessible, up-to-date information useful to those interested in neurodegenerative diseases.

Marina Chicurel, Biocuration Scientist

Marina Chicurel began working as a writer for Alzforum in 2017 and joined the database curation team a year later. As a curator, she helps scientists access, share, and analyze data, primarily by growing and maintaining Alzforum’s databases. Marina earned a B.S. in basic biomedical research from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard. Before joining Alzforum, she served as science director at the Hereditary Disease Foundation.

Lucia Huntington, Copy Editor

Before joining Alzforum in 2013, Lucia Huntington was a journalist who worked in Boston for the Globe and the Herald newspapers, in Seoul for The JoongAng Daily, and in Hong Kong for The International Herald Tribune. In 2005-2006 she worked for NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, Afghanistan, as senior editor for its news service Sada-e Azadi, which means "The Voice of Freedom" in Dari.

Lucia earned her bachelor's degree from Tufts University with a major in history and a focus in classics. She was certified as a paralegal but always felt a pull toward newspapers and their penchant for clarity on short order.

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