David Attwell did a first degree in physics and a PhD on the electrophysiology of nerve and muscle cells (with Julian Jack) in Oxford, before spending 2 years in Berkeley studying the retina with Frank Werblin. On returning to the UK, he moved to the Department of Physiology at University College London, where he has remained ever since. He has worked on a wide range of subjects including the properties of glial cells, glutamate transporters, stroke, the formation of myelin by oligodendrocytes, how neuronal computation is powered and the control of cerebral blood flow. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2001.

Rhoda Au is Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Neurology and Epidemiology at Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public. She also currently serves as Director of Neuropsychology at the Framingham Heart Study, where she has been involved in research related to cognitive aging and preclinical/clinical dementia since 1990. The limits of standard neuropsychological testing led her to apply the Boston Process Approach (BPA) to increase the sensitivity of these tests. The BPA includes tracking error and extraneous responses and FHS is the first to apply this method to epidemiologic research. Most recently, she has integrated digital technology into the cognitive assessment process while preserving the traditional paper-pencil test experience. Using digital voice and digital pen to capture cognitive performance underlies her current work of determining the potential of digital cognitive biomarkers as surrogate indices to more expensive and invasive fluid and imaging biomarkers. She is also interested in how “big data” analytics can better inform our understanding of disease pathways and treatment. In addition to her work at Framingham, Dr. Au is also currently focused on building multi-sector ecosystems to enable solutions for chronic disease prevention generally and optimizing brain health specifically and to move the primary focus of health technologies from precision medicine to a broader emphasis on precision health.

Geert Jan Biessels is Professor of Neurology at the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus Institute. He studied Medicine and Medical Biology (cum laude) at Utrecht University and obtained his PhD in 1997. He was certified as a neurologist in 2004. He did fellowships at the Alzheimer Centre of the VUMC Amsterdam in 2004 and at the Dementia Research Center of the UCL Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, London,  in 2010.

From 2011 he heads  the section General Neurology of the department of Neurology at the UMC Utrecht. July 2012 he was appointed as Professor of Neurology, with a chair on Cerebrovascular Disease and Cognition.

His research interest is on vascular cognitive impairment (VCI); cognitive dysfunction due to vascular disease. His ambition is to increase insight in underlying disease processes, improve detection of the vascular burden in dementia –in research and clinical practice– and optimize treatment. Intensive collaboration with national and international partners is a cornerstone of his work. He leads the Utrecht VCI Study Group. Core projects from the group employ  ultra-high field 7T MRI to zoom in on microvascular brain changes in VCI. In 2012 his group was able, for the first time, to detect cerebral microinfarcts in vivo. Other projects address other innovative markers of cerebral microvascular abnormalities and parenchymal damage on 3&7T MRI.

In October 2010 he has started the Utrecht VCI Centre, a multidisciplinary expertise center that offers state of the art diagnosis and treatment and integrates research activities and clinical care.

Cognition and dementia in people with type 2 diabetes(T2DM) is another key topic. His research group has characterized the severity and trajectories of stages of cognitive dysfunction in T2DM and established underlying structural brain changes with MRI. In addition, they developed a risk score for  individualized prediction of 10-years dementia risk in patients with T2DM and validated screening tools to detect cognitive impairment. He is PI in two large RCTs on prevention of cognitive decline in T2DM.

Sandra Black, MD, FRCP(C) is an internationally renowned cognitive and stroke neurologist, who is a Professor of Medicine (Neurology) in the Department of Medicine, University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, where she held the inaugural Brill Chair in Neurology from 2006-17. A leading clinical trialist in dementia, she is the Executive Director of the Toronto Dementia Research Alliance, a collaborative network of five institutional UofT memory programs. She is Sunnybrook Site Director of the Heart & Stroke Foundation Canadian Partnership for Stroke Recovery and Hurvitz Brain Sciences Research Program Director at Sunnybrook Research Institute. She has published over 500 papers (Scopus H index 80; Google 101; >28,000 citations) in a 30-year research career that has bridged dementia and stroke, using neuroimaging to study brain-behavior relationships, with a recent focus on relationships of Alzheimer’s and silent stroke disease. She has earned numerous mentorship and research awards, including election to the Royal Society of Canada (2012), and the UofT Faculty of Medicine Dean’s Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award (2015). She was named to the Order of Ontario in 2011, cited as an assiduous physician leader and influential architect of the Ontario Stroke System, and in 2015 appointed Officer to the Order of Canada for her contributions to Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and vascular dementia.

Mark Bondi received his PhD in clinical psychology and neuropsychology in 1991 from the University of Arizona.  He completed his internship and postdoctoral fellowship training at UC San Diego and joined the faculty in 1994.  He is currently Professor of Psychiatry at UC San Diego and Director of the Neuropsychological Assessment Unit at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.  He has served on several elected boards of the American Psychological Association, the Board of Directors of the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology, and Board of Governors of the International Neuropsychological Society.  Since 1998 he has been board certified in Clinical Neuropsychology by the American Board of Professional Psychology.  He has received continuous funding since 1991 from NIH, VA, Alzheimer's Association and private foundation grants, a Mid-Career Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research from NIA, and sponsored 18 NIH and VA career development awards of his current and former trainees.  His research centers on the cognitive and brain changes of individuals at risk for dementia, and he has published more than 195 articles, books, and book chapters.  He serves on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, Neuropsychology, and as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.  He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and National Academy of Neuropsychology, and former President of the Society for Clinical Neuropsychology (Division 40 of APA).

Monique Breteler, M.D., Ph.D., is the Director of Population Health Sciences at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE). In addition to her affiliation with DZNE, Dr. Breteler is a professor of population health sciences at the University of Bonn. In the scientific community, she is especially well-known for her achievements in the Rotterdam Study, in which she found a correlation between vascular diseases and neurological disorders of the brain. Dr. Breteler studied both medicine and epidemiology. She received her M.D. in 1987 from the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands and her Ph.D. in epidemiology in 1993 from the University of Rotterdam. From 1995 to 2011, she was the head of Neuroepidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology at Erasmus Medical Center at the University of Rotterdam, and since 2002 she has held an adjunct professorship at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Roxana Carare qualified in Medicine in Bucharest in 1994. During her basic clinical training, she became fascinated by anatomy and completed her PhD in experimental neuropathology in 2006, in the University of Southampton, UK. She was appointed lecturer in 2001, associate professor in 2014 and professor of clinical neuroanatomy in 2016. The main international recognition for Roxana Carare has come from the interdisciplinary research she leads, investigating the cause of Alzheimer's disease and suggesting therapeutic strategies. Roxana is a member of the MRC Dementia Platform UK Vascular Experimental Medicine committee and the UK government advisory committee for the effects of pollution on the brain. The Carare team has won prestigious awards, including a Dementia Research Leader award from Alzheimer’s Society UK. Roxana has enjoyed teaching anatomy for 20 years, with a passion for neuroanatomy. She has supervised over 50 undergraduate projects and has contributed to the design of the medical undergraduate curriculum in Southampton. Roxana chairs the committee for equality, diversity and inclusivity in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton.

Dr. Christopher Chen is a Senior Clinician-Scientist, Associate Professor at the Departments of Pharmacology and Psychological Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, and Director of the Memory Aging and Cognition Centre, National University Healthcare System.

His pre-clinical studies were at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University, and his clinical training was at New College, University of Oxford. He was elected the Janssen Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Neurology, London.

Since returning to Singapore, Dr. Chen has developed multi-disciplinary research programmes with extensive international collaborations. His major research and clinical interests are in neuroimaging, molecular biology and the treatment of stroke and dementia. He has published over 300 peer reviewed papers, serves on journal editorial boards and has been a member of trial steering committees and advisory panels.

Currently he is Chair of the International Society for Vascular Behavioural and Cognitive Disorders, President of the Asian Society Against Dementia; Secretary-Treasurer of the Asian & Oceanian Association of  Neurology, member of the World Stroke Organisation Board of Directors and its Finance Committee as well as member of the Finance Committee of the World Federation of Neurology.

Frank-Erik de Leeuw is a professor in cerebrovascular disease, with an emphasis on young stroke and cerebral small vessel disease.

Clinically he works as a vascular neurologist at the department of Neurology of the Radboud University Medical Centre. His main interest in on causes and cognitive consequences of cerebrovascular disease in the young and elderly. There is a broad spectrum of cerebrovascular disease ranging from acute symptomatic intracerebral hemorrhages and cerebral infarcts to the more chronic white matter lesions and microbleeds, the latter usually going clinically unnoticed. Central in his research are clinical observations, that are being translated to an applied research question. The subsequent answers are taken back to the clinic. Cognitive and behavioral dysfunction and recovery after cerebrovascular disease are central in his research in which neuroepidemiology, neuroimaging and neuropsychology provide the methodological backbone of the often large cohorts studies that have been founded by the group.

De Leeuw is the founder and principal investigator of the

- RUNDMC study, a prospective study on causes and consequences of cerebral small vessel disease (baseline started in 2006).

- FUTURE study, the worlds’ largest study with the longest follow up on causes and consequences of young stroke (baseline started in 2009).

- ODYSSEY study, a nationwide multicenter prospective cohort study on on causes and consequences of young stroke (baseline started in 2013).

In addition he participated in several, both investigator and industry initiated, clinical trials and cohort studies (ESPRIT, PASS, DIAGRAM, MRCLEAN, PSI, PERFORM and DUST).

Fergus is a senior clinical lecturer and consultant stroke physician and geriatrician in the University of Edinburgh and Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh funded by the Stroke Association and Garfield Weston Foundation. His main research interests are in cerebral small vessel disease, specifically building on his Wellcome funded PHD investigating the role of retinal imaging in determining brain pathophysiology, MRI based cerebrovascular reactivity, assessing complex symptom burden including cognition, randomized trials of novel therapies and determining what matters to patients in trials.

Research Group Leader at the Institute for Stroke and Dementia Research (ISD) in Munich, Germany. My group is interested in the mechanisms by which vascular dysfunction causes cognitive decline. The major focus of our work is on cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) using advanced neuroimaging in patients and animal models.

Deborah Gustafson is a Professor at the State University of New York-Downstate Medical Center, Department of Neurology, Section for NeuroEpidemiology. She is and Guest Professor and docent in Sweden at the University of Gothenburg, Sahlgrenska Academy, Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Research Unit, and at the University of Skövde, School of Health and Education. Dr. Gustafson was first to report on a relationship between overweight and obesity and risk of Alzheimer's disease in population-based studies in Sweden. Today, she explores potential mechanisms of adipose tissue, as well as vascular and metabolic factors, in relationship to cognition, neuropsychiatric disorders and brain structure in epidemiologic studies. In Sweden, she is a co-Investigator on AGECAP, a Swedish initiative. In Brooklyn, she is Co-Principal Investigator on the NIH-funded, Women’s Interagency HIV Study (WIHS), a multi-center cohort study in the US, for which she chairs the Aging Working Group and leads efforts in assessments of frailty, adiposity and cognition. She also collaborates with studies in Southwest American Indian communities. Deborah is the recipient of grants from the National Institutes of Health, the European Union, and the Swedish Research Council. Dr. Gustafson has over 150 peer-reviewed or invited publications and reviews. She is an Chair of the Vascular Professional Interest Area of the Alzheimer Association International Congress; Associate Editor forAlzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the US Alzheimer’s Association; a member of the New York Academy of Sciences Nutrition, Dementia and Aging Working Group; and a member of the New York City Obesity Forum. Deborah received her educational training from the University of Minnesota (PhD, MS and BA), held an NIH postdoctoral fellowship in Genetic Epidemiology, received docentur in Experimental Psychiatry in Sweden and was awarded the Senior Researcher position in Psychiatric Epidemiology by the Swedish Research Council.

Prof. Jianping Jia is currently a Professor and the Chair of Neurology of the Beijing Xuan Wu Hospital, Capital Medical University. He obtained his doctoral degree from Norman Bethune University of Medical Sciences in 1990. His primary research interests are the vascular contribution to cognitive impairment and dementia.

Prof. Vincent Mok's research aims to understand mechanisms of dementia and to investigate strategies that may help to prevent dementia and cerebrovascular disease. He is the first in Asia to report the association of cerebral small vessel disease and cognitive impairment, as well as the first in the world to utilize in-vivo amyloid PET imaging in understanding the contribution of amyloid pathology in poststroke dementia. Moreover, he also specializes in Parkinson's disease and was one of the pioneers of developing Deep Brain Stimulation programme in the region. He received the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award (Science & Technology) in Natural Sciences (1st Class), from the Ministry of Education, People's Republic of China in 2011 for his research in cerebrovascular disease, and the Excellent Research Award, from the Food and Health Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2017 for his research in vascular cognitive disorder. He received 7 times Teacher of the Year Award and the Master Teacher Award. Prof. Mok has authored more than 300 publications in peer-reviewed international journals (with book chapters), with publications at Lancet, JAMA, Lancet Neurology, Nature Reviews Neurology, JAMA Psychiatry, Alzheimer's & Dementia, Annals of Neurology, Neurology, JNNP and Stroke.

Miia Kivipelto, MD, PhD, is Professor in Clinical Geriatrics at Karolinska Institutet, Center for Alzheimer Research and  senior geriatrician and Managing Director & Director for Research & Development of Theme Aging at Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden.

Part of her Nordic Brain Network research team is located at University of Eastern Finland where she has part time position as Professor of Neurogeriatrics.

July 2017 she was pointed as Visiting Professor in Neuroepidemiology, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, UK.

Dr. Kivipelto’s translational research focuses on the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Her frontline research findings have been published in leading scientific journals (260+ publications, H-index 60) and she has received major research grants as principal investigator (PI) and initiated several novel international initiatives.

Through epidemiological studies, Prof. Kivipelto has identified various lifestyle and vascular risk factors for dementia and interactions with genetic factors. She has developed the first tool for predicting dementia risk based on midlife risk profiles. This is still one of the few validated risk scores in the field, is in clinical use (including clinical trials), and now available also as a mobile app. These findings paved the way to the current prevention trials.

Professor Kivipelto is the PI of the landmark FINGER Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) (Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability, Lancet 2015),which is so far the only large, long-term randomized controlled trials (RCT) to show significant benefits on cognition and functional level among at-risk persons from general population. FINGER has caused a paradigm shift, i.e. cognitive decline is no longer an inevitable consequence of aging, but can be prevented with multidomain lifestyle based interventions. This pragmatic model is now tested and adapted worldwide (e.g. SINGER trial in Singapore, US-POINTER, MIND-China, UK-FINGER, Canada-FINGER, MYB in Australia). Based on these collaborations, Professor Kivipelto has recently launched the World Wide FINGERS Initiative (http://wwfingers.com), a unique interdisciplinary network to share experiences, harmonise data, and plan joint international initiatives for the prevention of cognitive impairment/dementia

Professor Kivipelto has also contributed to understanding biological mechanisms underlying AD, with studies in humans and animal models, as well as characterisation of biomarkers that can aid early diagnosis, prognosis and treatment monitoring in AD. She is actively involved in phase I-III drug trials, and is co-leader of the EPAD Initiative (European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia), a European project aiming to establish readiness cohorts and develop a pan-European platform to deliver an adaptive trial for the secondary prevention of AD. Within EPAD.

She has received numerous of prestigious awards, including the Neuroscientist of the Year (Finland, 2018), MetLife Foundation Major Award for Medical Research (2016), Swedish Alzheimer Research Foundation Major Award (2016), Waijlit and Eric Forsgren’s award for dementia researcher (2015), Best PI at KI award (2014) and AXA Research Award (2014), Karolinska Institutet Skandia’s Lennart Levi prize (2013), Junior Chamber International Award for Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World (2011), Academy of Finland Award for Social Impact (2009).

Due to her expertise, Professor Kivipelto is often invited to leading conferences and international steering committees, including the G8 Dementia Summit, OECD data mapping for Alzheimer research, and WHO Ministerial meeting on Global actions against dementia.

Dr. Ko holds Bachelor of Medical Sciences (BMedSci, 1st class) and Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (MBChB) from CUHK. He pursued PhD in neuroscience under the supervision of Professor Thomas Mrsic-Flogel at University College London in the UK and won the runner-up award of the 2014 Eppendorf & Science Prize for Neurobiology based on his PhD works. Dr. Ko serves as a principal investigator at the Gerald Choa Neuroscience Center and the Li Ka Shing Institute of Health Sciences of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Leading a team with expertise in biology, chemistry and engineering, his research works focus on the principles by which neural circuits mediate sensory perception and behavior, neurovascular biology, as well as the development of novel neuroimaging tools.

David J. Libon, PhD is Professor of Geriatrics, Gerontology, and Psychology at the New Jersey Institute for Successful Aging, School of Osteopathic Medicine, Rowan University.  Dr. Libon obtained his doctoral degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1985 and then went on to receive training in clinical neuropsychology at the Boston VA Medical Center under the supervision of Edith Kaplan, PhD.  Dr. Libon was an early pioneer in conducting research regarding neuropsychological syndromes associated with MRI evidence of white matter alterations and subcortical vascular dementia.  For this research Dr. Libon was honored in 1998 with the Nelson Butters Award by the National Academy of Neuropsychology.  More recently the Libon lab has used statistical modeling techniques to elucidate phenotypic syndromes in both dementia and Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI).  Dr. Libon has recently co-edited a book on Edith Kaplan and the Boston Process Approach as related to clinical neuropsychological assessment.  In 2015 Dr. Libon was honored by the International Neuropsychological Society with the Paul Satz Teaching Career Mentorship Award for his teaching and mentorship activities.

Paul Maruff is neuropsychologist who is chair of the Australian Imaging Biomakers and Lifestyle (AIBL) study and a member of the Anesthesia and Cognition group at St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.  Paul is also Chief Science Officer at Cogstate Ltd.

Prof. Toshiki Mizuno has received his PhD in Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine (KPUM) in 1991. Currently, he is working as professor in Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine. His research has included Neurology, molecular biology, Molecular Neurobiology.

Sarah Pendlebury graduated in Medicine in 1992 from Oxford and worked subsequently in London and France. She is Associate Professor supported by the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre in the Centre for Prevention of Stroke and Dementia, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, and also Consultant Physician and Clinical Lead for Dementia and Delirium at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. Research interests include cognitive impairment associated with cerebrovascular disease and with acute illness and the interactions between vascular disease, neurodegeneration, co-morbidity and delirium.  Her research is based mainly in the Oxford Vascular Study and in cohorts of older in-patients including those with cognitive and physical frailty. She leads developments around routine cognitive assessment for older and at-risk hospital patients, including in electronic patient record systems, to drive better patient care.

Perminder Sachdev AM, MBBS, MD, PhD, FRANZCP, FAAHMS is Scientia Professor of Neuropsychiatry at UNSW Sydney (UNSW), Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing (CHeBA), UNSW, and Clinical Director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute, Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney, Australia.  He graduated from the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi in 1978 and completed his MD in Psychiatry in 1983 at that institution before migrating to New Zealand.  He then relocated to Australia where he completed his psychiatric training and PhD (1991) and went on to head the Neuropsychiatric Institute.

His doctorate was on the ethnopsychological concepts in Maori culture.  His early work in Neuropsychiatry was on drug-induced movement disorders, in particular akathisia, tardive dyskinesia and neuroleptic malignant syndrome.  His most recent work has been in dementia and pre-dementia syndromes, in particular relating to neuroimaging, neuropsychology, biomarkers and risk factors.  He has extensively examined the outcome of psychosurgery, and is currently involved in examining brain stimulation techniques (TMS, DCS, VNS and DBS) for psychiatric disorders. Dr. Sachdev is past-president of the International Neuropsychiatric Association and inaugural Chair of the Section of Neuropsychiatry of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists.  He is a past-President of the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology, Medical Adviser and Founding Executive Member of the Tourette Syndrome Association of Australia, and Chief Medical Adviser to Alzheimer’s Australia.

In 2012, he co-founded CHeBA at UNSW, which promotes brain health and prevention of dementia. He leads three longitudinal cognitive ageing studies: Sydney Memory and Ageing Study, Older Australian Twins Study and Sydney Centenarian Study; three international networks: COSMIC, STROKOG and ICC-Dementia. He has published 5 books, 3 edited books, 57 book chapters and >600 peer-reviewed papers. His H-index is 90 with >29,000 total citations via Google Scholar. His recent books are The Yipping Tiger and Other Tales from the Neuropsychiatric Clinic and Secondary Schizophrenia.  He has also published a book of poems: A migrant’s musings and other offerings to an adopted land.

Prof Sachdev was NSW Scientist of the Year for Biomedical Sciences (2010) and appointed Member of the Order of Australia (2011) for service to medical research in the field of neuropsychiatry. He was awarded the Founder’s Medal by the Australian Society for Psychiatric Research (2011) and was an International Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association (2012). He received the UNSW Medicine Dean’s award (2014) for outstanding contribution to research and teaching and became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (2015).

Dr. Sang Won Seo is an associate professor at the Department of Neurology, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center. His lab studies the relationship among Alzheimer’ disease, small vessel disease, and cognition. Multimodal neuroimaging methods and pathology are employed, including amyloid PET/Tau PET/MRI/fMRI/DTI. His ultimate research goal is to explore the interactions between neuroimaging, genotype, cognition, and disease for early detection, prognosis, differential diagnosis, and treatment planning.

Sang Won was a visiting scholar at Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (2014) and at Neuropathology, Memory Aging Center University of California at San Francisco (2015). Sang Won received his MD from Yonsei Medical School in 1997 and his Ph.D. in Neurolgy in 2008 from Yonsei Medical School. Sang Won has published about 200 papers in international peer-reviewed journals including JAMA psychiatry, Annals of Neurology, Brain, Alzheimer and dementia, Neurology, and so on. He serves as editor/ad-hoc reviewer for various journals and grants. Dr. Seo has been the recipient of research support from Korean government.

Ingmar Skoog became M.D. in 1985, Ph.D. in 1993, specialist in psychiatry 1993, and professor in Psychiatry in 2001. He is currently director for the Centre for Ageing and Health AGECAP, which includes 16 institutions and 6 faculties at the University of Gothenburg and is leading the Neuropsychiatric Epidemiology Unit (Epinep) at the Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been involved in epidemiological research since 1983, and is PI of the H70 Birth Cohort Studies in Gothenburg. The main research interest has been regarding dementia and other mental disorders in the elderly, with special emphasize on the relation between cardiovascular disorders and Alzheimer’s disease and depression. His main finding is the association between high blood pressure and Alzheimer’s disease published in 1996. Currently, he is also interested in how time-trends influences the frequency of disorders. Ingmar Skoog has published 280 original research articles and more than 100 reviews and book chapters. He has been invited to more than 250 international meetings. He received the Zenith Fellows Award from the American Alzheimer's Association in 2001, the Danish Strömgren Award in Psychiatry in 2002, Inga Sandeborgs prize from Swedish Medical Society in 2006, and the Senior Award by the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology in 2013. He was Secretary General of Vas-Cog 2002-2012.

Dr. Smith is the Medical Director of the Cognitive Neurosciences Clinic and a member of the Calgary Stroke Program. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Calgary, and the inaugural holder of the Kathy Taylor Chair in Vascular Dementia.

He obtained his MD degree from McGill University and completed his neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital, teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Smith's research program investigates the risk factors and consequences of diseases of the cerebral microcirculation, with the goal of improving the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of vascular contributions to cognitive decline and vascular dementia. His research work has been funded by Alberta Innovates – Health Solutions, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Alzheimer Society of Canada and the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He has received the Robert G. Siekert Award from the American Heart Association for his research work. He is an Assistant Editor for Stroke and is a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Neurology. Dr. Smith sees patients in the Cognitive Neurosciences Clinic and the Stroke Prevention Clinic.

Prof. Srikanth is an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow, and has been the recipient of continuous fellowships from the NHMRC and the Heart Foundation ove the last 10 years. His program of research spans several aspects of ageing health. His primary interest is in the study of risk factors and mechanisms underlying dementia, particularly with respect to vascular and metabolic health. He has also led the field in the study of the impact of brain ageing on impaired mobility and the risk of falls, and in the link between brain ageing, gait and cognition. He actively collaborates in large scale initiatives in the genetics of brain ageing and risk stratification for the secondary prevention of stroke.

Dr. Lin Shi is an Assistant Professor in Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology (DIIR), The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is the Director and co-founder of Division of Imaging Informatics, DIIR. She got her PhD degree in CU Computer Science in 2008, and was working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Research Assistant Professor in CU DIIR for 6 years and an Assistant Professor in CU Neurology for 3 years. Her research interests are mainly in the field of multimodal image quantification of brain and orthopedic images To support clinical research and practice. She has published more than 120 papers in peer-reviewed journals and has been awarded the Best Young Engineer's Paper Award, by Biomedical Division, The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. Dr. Shi is the inventor of 7 patents Related to medical imaging and quantification techniques, and founded a startup company, BrainNow Ltd. in 2015 to promote the clinical applications of neuroimage analysis technology.

Majon Muller is an internist-geriatrician, an epidemiologist, and a Professor of Cardiovascular Aging at the department of Internal Medicine of the Amsterdam UMC in the Netherlands. She studied Health Sciences and Medicine at Radboud University Nijmegen and obtained her PhD in 2003. She was certified as an internist and geriatrician in 2009. She worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Getrude H. Sergievsky Center (Columbia University, NYC, USA) in 2006 and at the National Institute on Aging (NIH, Bethesda, USA) in 2011.

From 2016 she heads  the section Geriatrics of the department of Internal Medicine at the Amsterdam UMC (VUmc). She was recently (December 2018) appointed as Professor of Internal Medicine, with a chair on Cardiovascular Aging.

Her research interest is on the relation between heart and brain and on cardiovascular risk management in older populations. Her ambitions are 1) to investigate the pathophysiological relation between chronic cardiovascular disease and dementia; 2) to investigate optimal treatment targets with respect to cardiovascular risk management in older populations; and 3) to develop targeted care-programs for older patients with cardiovascular disease and/or VCI.

Recently, she initiated the Heart-Brain Center in collaboration with the department of cardiology and the Alzheimer center of the Amsterdam UMC , which is an outpatient clinic for patients with VCI and/or chronic cardiac disease.

Astrid Hooghiemstra is a senior researcher at Alzheimer center Amsterdam of the Amsterdam UMC in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She studied neuropsychology at the University of Leiden, after which she obtained her PhD in 2014 at VU University, Amsterdam. During her PhD Astrid gained experience with non-pharmacological RCTs studying the effect of physical exercise programs on cognitive functioning in patients with dementia.

At present, Astrid works for the Heart-Brain Connection consortium. This Dutch consortium focuses on the cardiovascular contribution to cognitive impairment. Part of the consortium is an RCT studying the effect of aerobic exercise on the cerebral blood flow in patients with vascular cognitive impairment. Other research interests of Astrid are neuropsychology and e-health interventions. Besides research, she focuses her work on research ethics and integrity and communication of research to the general public.

Qun Xu, MD, PhD, is Professor and deputy director of Neurologic Department, Renji Hospital, Medical School of Shanghai JiaoTong University, China. Her research interests were cerebral small vessel disease and vascular cognitive impairment. She is the PI of Renji cerebral small vessel disease cohort study (RCCS), which mainly focused on investigating MRI surrogate markers of vascular cognitive impairment

Dr. Saima Hilal is currently a post-doctoral scientific researcher in Erasmus Medical Center, Netherlands and a visiting research fellow at Department of Pharmacology, National University of Singapore. Her major expertise sets in neuroimaging, epidemiology, blood based biomarkers and cognition in the field of Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and other related disorders. Her research involves exploring both vascular and neurodegenerative causes to cognitive impairment in community and hospital based settings.

Prof. Yu Hua Fan is currently a Professor in the Department of Neurology at The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou. Prof. Fan obtained her MD from The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University in 2003. Her primary research interests focus on cerebrovascular disease, especially on cerebral small vessel disease.  Except for the clinical and neuroimaging study of CSVD, Prof. Fan has also done some translational studies on the mechanisms of CSVD in rats and published several papers in famous journals, such as Neuroscience, BioMed Research International, CNS Neuroscience & Therapeutics, NeuroReport and Metabolic Brain Disease.

Professor Jianhui Fu,  MD, PhD, is currently a Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai. He has been a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Duke University. His main research areas revolves the clinical course and pathogenesis of cerebral small vessel disease (including lacunar stroke , white matter damages and microbleeds). And he has conducted pioneering research on cerebrovascular hemodynamics. Up to now, he has published more than 60 articles in domestic and foreign journals as the first or the corresponding author , more than 20 of which are SCI papers. He has undertaken a number of research projects as principle investigator involving the National Natural Science Foundation and Shanghai provincial level projects. Additionally, he has now participated in two National Science and Technology Major Projects. He has won the third prize for the Scientific and Technology Award of Shanghai in 2014. And in 2017, he has been awarded the second class prize for Scientific and Technology Progress of China because of his pioneering work on “the application of new strategy and technology for the prevention of ischemic stroke”.

Maxine Qianyun Chen obtained her master’s degree in biomedical engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree on pharmaceutical engineering from the Guangdong University of Technology. Currently she is a research assistant in the Department of Imaging and Interventional Radiology at the CUHK where she works on various neuroimaging projects with radiologists, neurologists, engineers, and MRI physicists. Mainly she is involved in image processing and analysis of MRI data, as well as the technical development of various neuroimaging tools for research and clinical translation. In the past several months, Ms. Chen has been actively involved in the ICOS study, helping to set the stage for this multicenter collaborative project on clinical and imaging biomarkers of small vessel disease. In this presentation, she will talk about the efforts required and the challenges faced when harmonizing MRI scanning protocols across different centers.

Bonnie Yin Ka Lam is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine and Therapeutics, the CUHK. Dr. Lam obtained the Bachelor of Advanced Science and Ph.D. in Neuroscience at the University of New South Wales (UNSW). She received numerous awards such as the Dean’s List for outstanding research in Medicine (UNSW) and the Young Investigator Award (VasCog World Meeting 2015). Her prime research interest is in the understanding of small vessel disease, neurodegeneration, and poststroke dementia. Her focus is to investigate brain changes through the use of neuroimaging.