Dr. Montine received his education at Columbia University (BA in Chemistry), the University of Rochester (PhD in Pharmacology), and McGill University (MD and CM). His postgraduate medical training was at Duke University, and he was junior faculty at Vanderbilt University where he was awarded the Thorne Professorship in Pathology. In 2002, Dr. Montine was appointed as the Alvord Endowed Professor in Neuropathology and Director of the Division of Neuropathology at the University of Washington. In 2010, Dr. Montine was appointed Chair of the Department of Pathology at the University of Washington, and in 2016, he was appointed Chair of the Department of Pathology at Stanford University and the Stanford Medicine Endowed Professor in Pathology. The focus of the Montine Laboratory is on the structural and molecular bases of cognitive impairment with the goal of defining key pathogenic steps and thereby new therapeutic targets. The Montine Laboratory addresses these prevalent, unmet medical needs through a combination of neuropathology, biomarker development and application early in the course of disease, and experimental studies that test hypotheses concerning specific mechanisms of neuron injury and approaches to neuroprotection. Dr. Montine’s role in ACTC is Chair of the Biospecimen Allocation Review Committee.

Sarah Walter is the Program Administrator for the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC) and for the Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute (ATRI) at the University of Southern California.  Her role is to ensure efficient operation of the consortium and to foster collaboration both within the community and with external partners.  She draws on her experience across the spectrum of clinical trials, from participant recruitment, conducting assessments, to clinical monitoring, data management, and project and program administration.  She facilitates communication between ACTC Leadership and Committees, manages the review and development of ACTC Projects, Co-Chairs the Research Participant Advisory Board, and is a member of the IDEA-CT Leadership Committee.

Dr. Laurie Ryan is Chief of the Dementias of Aging Branch in the Division of Neuroscience at the National Institute on Aging, part of the NIH. She oversees the development, coordination, and implementation of NIA’s translational and clinical Alzheimer’s disease research program.  Dr. Ryan also directs the Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials research portfolio.

Dr. Ryan received her BA in Human Development from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 1986 and her Masters in Psychology from Loyola College in Maryland in 1991.  She undertook doctoral training in clinical psychology with specialty focus in neuropsychology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.  She completed a neuropsychology-focused psychology residency at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston and clinical neuropsychology fellowship at Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.

After completing her fellowship, Dr. Ryan joined the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC.   In 2003, Dr. Ryan became the Assistant Director for Research where she was responsible for overseeing clinical research development and implementation with a particular focus on clinical trials.  In September 2005, Dr. Ryan joined the NIA as the Program Director for Alzheimer’s clinical trials.  In December 2013, she was promoted to her current position.

Dr. Ronald C. Petersen received a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Minnesota and graduated from Mayo Medical School in 1980.  He completed an internship in Medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and returned to the Mayo Clinic to complete a residency in Neurology.  That was followed by a fellowship in Behavioral Neurology at Harvard University Medical School/Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.  Dr. Petersen joined the staff of the Mayo Clinic in 1986 and became a Professor of Neurology in 1996.  In 2000 he was named the Cora Kanow Professor of Alzheimer’s Disease Research and Mayo Clinic Distinguished Investigator in 2011. He is currently the Director of the Mayo Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging and has authored over 960 peer-reviewed articles on memory disorders, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Dr. Petersen is one of the recipients of the 2004 MetLife Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer’s Disease and the 2005 Potamkin Prize for Research in Picks, Alzheimer’s and Related Disorders of the American Academy of Neurology.  In 2012 he received the Khachaturian Award and the Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 from the Alzheimer’s Association.  In 2011 he was appointed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services to serve as the Chair of the Advisory Committee on Research, Care and Services for the National Alzheimer’s Disease Plan, and in 2014, he was appointed to the World Dementia Council by the UK government.

Dr. Reisa Sperling is a neurologist focused on the detection and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease at the pre-symptomatic or “preclinical” stage. Dr. Sperling is a Professor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School, and Director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.  Dr. Sperling is the co-Principal Investigator of the Harvard Aging Brain Study, with Dr. Keith Johnson, at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She co-leads the Alzheimer Clinical Trial Consortium (ACTC), the NIA funded academic Alzheimer trial consortium, with Dr. Paul Aisen at University of Southern California, and Dr. Ron Petersen at the Mayo Clinic. For ACTC she also is also Co-Chair of the Inclusion, Diversity and Education in Alzheimer’s disease – Clinical Trials (IDEA-CT) Committee, and is a member of the Project Evaluation Committee (PEC).  Dr. Sperling chaired the 2011 NIA-Alzheimer’s Association workgroup to develop guidelines for the study of “Preclinical Alzheimer’s disease.” She leads the Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s disease (A4) Study – a secondary prevention trial in over 1150 clinically normal older individuals with PET amyloid imaging evidence of early AD pathology, the companion LEARN Study, and two new AD prevention trials with the ACTC. Dr. Sperling received the 2011 Derek Denny-Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award, the 2015 American Academy of Neurology Potamkin Prize, and was named one of the 2017 Most Disruptive Women to Watch in Healthcare.

Paul Aisen, M.D., is a member of the ACTC Leadership team, with oversight over the ACTC Coordinating Center at USC ATRI.  He chairs the Project Feasibility Committee, and serves as a PI on the ACTC-affiliated TRC-PAD Program, and the A3 and A45 Studies.

Dr. Aisen founded ATRI in 2015. Aisen has been a leading figure in Alzheimer’s disease research for more than two decades, having developed novel methodologies as well as designed and directed many large therapeutic trials. He received his B.A. in biochemistry and molecular biology from Harvard and his medical degree from Columbia. He completed his residency at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, and then fellowship training in rheumatology at New York University. After serving as chief medical resident at Mount Sinai, he began a solo practice in internal medicine and rheumatology in New York. Aisen joined the faculty of Mount Sinai in 1994 and was recruited to Georgetown University in 1999 as a professor of neurology and medicine. That year, he founded the Memory Disorders Program, a clinical and research program for Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. He continued basic research studies on therapeutic targets and biomarkers and designed and directed multicenter therapeutic trials. He became vice chair of the Department of Neurology at Georgetown in 2004. From 2007 through 2015, he was professor in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study.