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2026 FHS-BAP Symposium

Transforming Brain Health: Digital Approaches in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

2026 6th Annual FHS-BAP Symposium

Watch the symposium below:

Brittany Duggar, PhD

Dr. Brittany Duggar is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D.-trained neuropathologist and neuroanatomist. She earned her Ph.D. from Mayo Clinic Graduate School and went on to hold research positions at the Banner Sun Health Research Institute and the University of California, San Francisco, before joining UC Davis in 2017. Her research focuses on understanding heterogeneity within neurodegenerative diseases and the role of peripheral changes in aging and neurodegeneration, and she serves as the Neuropathology Core Leader for the UC Davis Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. Throughout her career, she has contributed to over 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, secured numerous funded grants, and been involved in national efforts through the College of American Pathologists and the ADRC Neuropathology Core Steering Committee.

Hiroko Dodge, PhD

Hiroko Dodge, PhD, is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of Research Analytics for the Interdisciplinary Brain Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Prior to joining Harvard in 2022, she was a Professor of Neurology and Co-Associate Director of the NIH–Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Oregon Health & Science University, where she also directed the Center’s Biostatistics and Data Management Core for more than 15 years. Between 2009 and 2019, she concurrently directed the Data Core at the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the University of Michigan, where she served as the Kevreson Professor of Neurology. Dr. Dodge’s overarching research theme focuses on validating epidemiologic findings through clinical trials and translating these results into real-world practice to improve
population health. Her current work spans two complementary areas: the development and refinement of innovative statistical methods to improve clinical trial design, and the conduct of behavioral intervention trials aimed at promoting brain health. She has led multiple NIH-funded studies examining the effects of social engagement and behavioral interventions on cognitive and emotional outcomes in older adults. She was the founding chair of the Clinical Trials Advancements and Outcomes Professional Interest Area within the International Society to Advance Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment (ISTAART), supported by the Alzheimer’s Association. She is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and serves as a statistical and senior editor for several dementia-focused journals.

Jeffrey Kaye, MD

Dr. Jeffrey Kaye is Adjunct Professor of Neurology at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), where he serves as Associate Director of the Ruth and Rex Layton Aging and Alzheimer's Disease Center and Director of the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH). He also holds a courtesy appointment as Professor in the School of Civil and Construction Engineering at Oregon State University. Dr. Kaye earned his B.A. from Amherst College and his medical degree from New York Medical College, completed neurology residency training at Boston University, and went on to fellowships in Movement Disorders at Boston University and brain aging at the National Institute on Aging. He joined OHSU in 1988 and spent over three decades building nationally recognized programs in aging and Alzheimer's disease research. The author of over 400 scientific publications, he has received major grant support from federal agencies, national foundations, and industry, and has been recognized with honors including the Charles Dolan Hatfield Award for Alzheimer Research, the Bill Theis National Alzheimer's Association Award for Distinguished Service, and fellowship in both the American Neurological Association and the Gerontological Society of America.

John Crary, MD, PhD

Dr. John Crary is an experimental neuropathologist and director of the Neuropathology Brain Bank & Research Core (NPBB) at Mount Sinai. His program focuses on human directed studies with a goal of identifying novel pathological changes and leveraging these findings to yield mechanistic insights useful for biomarker discovery, modeling, and therapeutic development. Dr. Crary has made contributions to diagnostic approaches for neurodegenerative disorders through an international network of neuropathologists. He spearheaded an effort to establish criteria for primary age-related tauopathy (PART) and contributed to define agingrelated tau astrogliopathy (ARTAG), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). Crary is working collaboratively on developing autopsy-validated iPSC
models. Finally, Crary is pioneering AI/ML approaches to modernize evaluation of human tissues, having developed the first deep learning algorithms for detection of neurodegeneration, prediction of dementia, and age-acceleration.

Vijaya Kolachalama, PhD

Vijaya Kolachalama is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine & Computer Science at Boston University (BU). He is also one of the founding
members of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences at BU. Before joining BU, he was a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Draper Laboratory and a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, where he also served as an ORISE Fellow at the US Food & Drug Administration. His laboratory develops methods at the intersection of AI and human health with a focus on neurodegenerative conditions. His research is supported by grants from the American Heart Association, National Institutes of Health (NIA, NCI, NIDDK, NHLBI and NINDS), Gates Ventures, and Johnson & Johnson Enterprise Innovation. Dr. Kolachalama is a Senior Member of IEEE, Toffler Scholar in Neuroscience and a Fellow of the American Heart Association, actively working with industry and investment communities to translate software technologies to the clinic.

Juan Eugenio Iglesias, PhD

Dr. Juan Eugenio Iglesias is an Associate Professor at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, with an affiliate appointment at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He holds M.Sc. degrees in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Seville and Electrical Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, and earned his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA supported by a Fulbright Science and Technology Award. Following postdoctoral fellowships at the Martinos Center and the Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language — the latter funded by a Marie Curie fellowship — he joined University College London as junior faculty supported by a Starting Grant from the European Research Council before returning to Boston in 2019. His research focuses on developing opensource machine learning and Bayesian methods for the analysis of brain MRI, with over 160 peer reviewed publications, an h-index of 50, and widely adopted tools including SynthSeg and FreeSurfer-based segmentation pipelines used across thousands of neuroimaging studies worldwide.

More about Framingham Heart Study Brain Aging Program

Framingham Heart Study Brain Aging Program
72 E Concord St. Boston, MA 02118

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