www.BrainHealthAlliance.org

Directors

Abass Alavi, MD: Dr. Alavi serves as Professor of Radiology and Neurology, as well as Director of Research Education in the Department of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is ABIM certified in internal medicine and ABNM certified in nuclear medicine. He received his M.D. from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and the honorary degrees of MD, PhD and DSc respectively from the University of Bologna, Shiraz University, and the University of the Sciences, as well as another honorary doctoral degree from the University of Tabriz in Iran where he was born. Dr. Alavi has produced more than 1,000 publications which have received about 50,000 citations with an h-index of 110, primarily in the areas of nuclear medicine, radiology, neurology and oncology. In recognition of his contributions as a leading researcher in PET imaging and the first to perform human PET studies of the brain and whole body using the F18-fluorodeoxyglucose radiotracer, he received the Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Pioneer Award in 2004 and later in 2012 received the Benedict Cassen Prize for Research in Nuclear Medicine.
Elena A Gleyzer, MD: Dr. Elena Alex Gleyzer, Board Certified in Family Medicine, serves as a staff physician at Western State Hospital, Lakewood, WA, where she provides internal medicine care, obstetrics & gynecology care, and performs small surgeries. She graduated with Red Diploma (honors) from The First Leningrad Medical Institute, St. Petersburg, USSR. Dr. Gleyzer completed internships in obstetrics & gynecology at the First Obstetrics & Gynecology Hospital in St. Petersburg, USSR, in Psychiatry at Sepulveda VA/UCLA, USA and in obstetrics & gynecology at Olive View Medical Center/UCLA, USA, as well as residency in Family Medicine at St. Joseph Hospital, Houston, Texas, USA. Her special interests are in the fields of Women’s Health and Office Surgery.
David Jordan, PhD: Prof. Jordan is ABR certified in medical nuclear physics, diagnostic radiological physics, ABSNM certified in nuclear medicine physics and instrumentation with additional certifications from the ABMRS and ABMP in MRI safety and MRI medical physics respectively. He received his BS in engineering physics, an MS in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences, as well as a PhD in nuclear engineering and radiological sciences, all from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He currently serves as a senior medical physicist at the University Hospitals Case Medical Center and assistant professor of Radiology at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. As a teacher, Prof. Jordan has repeatedly received the Physics Teacher of the Year award from the University Hospitals Radiology Residency. His recent publications focus on the fields of radiology, nuclear medicine, and applied physics relating to PET, CT and MRI.
Julie A Neidich, MD: Dr. Neidich serves as Associate Professor of Pathology and Immunology, and Director of the Cytogenomics and Molecular Pathology Laboratory in the Division of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at the Washington University St Louis School of Medicine. She is ABP certified in pediatrics, and ABMG certified in clinical, cytogenetic, biochemical, and molecular genetics with many years of experience in all aspects of genetic medicine and diagnostics. She obtained her BA at Bennington College and her MD at George Washington University. Dr. Neidich then received her pediatrics training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine Montefiore Medical Center and her genetics training at the University of Pennsylvania Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Before joining the faculty at Washington University, Dr. Neidich held faculty positions at Cornell University Medical College and Stanford University School of Medicine, as well as medical director positions at Quest Diagnostics Nichols Institute, Ambry Genetics, GeneDx and Pathway Genomics. Her special expertise focuses on phenotype-genotype correlations, neurogenetics, molecular cytogenetics, and biochemical genetics. She is a founding fellow of the American College of Medical Genetics and a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Paul de Quant, LLB: Mr. Paul de Quant, a Dutch national and law graduate, has had an extensive career in corporate governance and investment management. Since 2009, he serves as an independent director and risk management consultant for a range of companies and investment funds. Prior to this work, Mr. de Quant had established and managed a successful hedge fund business. He started his career with Chase Manhattan where he was trained in accounting, credit and corporate finance. From there he moved into equity and equity derivatives with the Yamaichi Group and subsequently became head of Asian equities for ANZ Merchant Bank in London. In 1991, Mr. de Quant co-founded a securities business in Amsterdam and Hong Kong, where he was based until 1998. He went on to co-establish and manage Monaco-based Alpha Investment Management, with a focus on hedge funds. This business became part of Deutsche Bank Group in 2006 after which Mr. de Quant remained at Alpha as Managing Director until 2009. Since 2012, he has been a Partner in The Directors’ Office in Luxembourg.
Bruce Sunstein, JD: Bruce D. Sunstein is the founder of the Boston law firm Sunstein LLP. His practice focuses on the development, management and monetization of intellectual property portfolios. Patents issuing on applications on which Bruce has worked have led to 8- and 9-figure infringement awards. Bruce has served as an expert witness, as a mediator, and as a special master, in a range of intellectual property disputes. He is a frequent lecturer in intellectual property matters and has authored numerous papers on intellectual property subjects. Bruce provides strategic advice for developing and enforcing IP rights and for structuring technology-based business transactions. He provides representation in inter partes review proceedings, ex parte reexaminations, and patent appeals to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board and to the Federal Circuit. Bruce has been named to the IAM Patent 1000 list for prosecution. He has also been named by the publishers of Law & Politics and Boston magazine as among the top 100 lawyers in Massachusetts. He has been selected by his peers for inclusion in Best Lawyers in America® in the fields of intellectual property – litigation and patent law. He has further been named to the Super Lawyers® list in the practice area of intellectual property in Massachusetts. Bruce holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S.), Indiana University (M.A.), and the School of Law of the University of California at Berkeley (J.D.). He also serves as a mentor for start-up companies in MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service.
Carl Taswell, MD, PhD: Dr. Taswell has been certified as a diplomate of both the American Board of Nuclear Medicine and the American Board of Psychiatry & Neurology, and serves on the faculty at UCSD with expertise in functional and molecular brain imaging. He received his BA in biochemistry from Harvard College, his MSc in mathematics and MD in medicine both from New York University, and his PhD in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University. He has completed a post-doctoral fellowship in biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health, as well as clinical training in psychiatry at UCSD and in nuclear medicine at UCSF. Since receiving a top ten scholarship award in the 1974 Science Talent Search (administered by the Society for Science), he has published numerous research papers spanning the fields of biochemistry, immunology, medicine, statistics, mathematics, informatics and brain imaging. Ever passionate about biomedical computing, he has designed and built software including LDACPA, ELIDA, WavBox, FirWav, GeneScene, PDP-DREAM and NPDS-LINKS. Dr. Taswell is also a member of the IEEE, SIAM, ACM, ASIST, AMIA, ATA, SNMMI, ISTAART, and IPA.

Board Alumni

P Cosman | S Nelson | D Sewell | A Sheth | C Triggle

Pamela Cosman, PhD: Dr. Cosman served as a BHA Director from 2017 to 2020. She is a Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UC San Diego. She obtained her B.S. with Honor in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Her research is in signal/image/video processing and compression, and wireless communications. Past projects include studying the effects of image compression on the diagnostic utility of CT and MR images, studying the visibility of packet losses in compressed video, quantifying body posture and movement of mutant nematodes, and video compression and error concealment algorithms for 3D video. Prof. Cosman is active in mentoring and promoting women in engineering, and in 2017 won the Athena Pinnacle Award for an Individual in Education, as well as the UC San Diego Affirmative Action / Diversity Award. Dr. Cosman is the author of The Secret Code Menace, a children’s book that teaches some concepts from wireless communications to children through a fictional story. Dr. Cosman is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Stuart J Nelson, MD: Dr. Nelson served as a BHA Director from 2021 to 2023. Dr. Nelson serves as Clinical Professor in Biomedical Informatics at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. After considerable experience in academic medicine, with a research area of medical informatics, he left medicine for full time medical informatics. He worked as a consultant to the National Library of Medicine on the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) project from 1988 until 1996. From 1996 to 2012 he served as the Head of Medical Subject Headings at the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. In addition to his work on MeSH, he conceived and developed RxNorm, a structured vocabulary of medication names, and with the cooperation of the FDA, DailyMed, the official site for publishing the product labels of medications in the United States. While at NIH, he received the NLM Board of Regents award for Scholarship and Technical Achievement and an NIH Award of Merit. He has numerous publications and presentations.
Daniel D Sewell, MD: Dr. Sewell served as a BHA Director from 2007 to 2023. Dr. Sewell serves as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Director of Senior Behavioral Health at UCSD. He is ABPN certified in psychiatry and geropsychiatry. He obtained his BA in biology at Grinnell College, his MD at the University of Iowa, and completed his residency in psychiatry and fellowship in geropsychiatry at UCSD. He has published many research papers in psychiatry and maintains special expertise in differentiating dementias from non- dementing illnesses. Dr. Sewell is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and the current President of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. He received the UCSD 2005 Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award in recognition of his "exemplary compassion, competence and respect in the delivery of care" and the AAGP 2014 Educator of the Year Award.
Amit Sheth, PhD: Dr. Sheth served as a BHA Director from 2016 to 2020. He spent many years as an educator, researcher and entrepreneur at Wright State University in Ohio, and now serves as Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina. He received his BE (Hons) in electrical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, then an MSc in computer and informational science and PhD in computer and information science, both from Ohio State University. He is the LexisNexis Ohio Eminent Scholar, executive director of Kno.e.sis - Ohio Center of Excellence in Knowledge-enabled Computing, and an IEEE Fellow. Kno.e.sis is an Ohio Center of Excellence in BioHealth Innovation involving researchers from Computer Science, Cognitive Science, School of Medicine, and Biomedical Science. His current NSF- and NIH-sponsored projects involve the use of personalized digital medicine, mobile technologies, IoT/sensor and social media analysis for clinical and health applications to asthma, dementia, depression, drug addiction and other diseases/conditions. His recent research themes include smart data, NLP and machine learning, citizen sensing, semantic perception and semantic sensor web. Prof. Sheth is especially proud of his students’ exceptional success in academia, industry research and as entrepreneurs.
Chris Triggle, PhD: Dr. Triggle served as a BHA Director from 2020 to 2023. Chris R. Triggle, BSc, PhD, FBPhS is a Professor of Pharmacology & Medical Education at Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar. He graduated with a BSc in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK and a PhD in Pharmacology from the University of Alberta in Canada and postdoctoral work at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He has held academic positions in Canada including Professor of Pharmacology and Associate Dean Basic Medical Sciences at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department Head of Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 1990-1999, and Associate Dean Research for Medicine, University of Calgary, 1999-2003. Professor Triggle also served as a pre-clinical research consultant for Ciba and later Novartis from 1992-1999 and was the President of the biotech company Neurospheres, from 1995-1998. From 2004-2007 he was Innovation Professor of Pharmacology and Director Biotechnology Institute at RMIT University, Melbourne Australia. His research focuses on the role of the endothelium in the regulation of vascular function, endothelial dysfunction, vascular disease and diabetes. Publications: >190 peer-reviewed, citations >8000, h-index of 53.