As physician-scientist with specialty and expertise in neurology and neuropathology, especially in the field of neurodegenerative diseases (dementias and movement disorders) and more recently TBI, I feel particularly suitable for this proposal. I have centered my clinical and research career in the study of neurodegenerative diseases and more recently on the neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric consequences related to these disorders. My previous clinical activities have focused on patients affected by dementias, movement disorders, and epilepsy; while my post-doctoral research fellowship in the Division of Neuropathology at Johns Hopkins University was focused on studies related to normal aging and neurodegenerative diseases. I have worked in some of the premier European institutions for neurology throughout Switzerland, France, and the UK. Prior to joining CNRM/USUHS, I have worked at the Atlantic Health System, NJ, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY and served as Senior Researcher and Head of The Brain Bank at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. I have authored over 30 articles in many high-impact journals and have received a series of research grants for young investigators. I have a great deal of experience related to the stereological analyses of human brain tissue and clinicopathologic correlation studies. In particular, I am familiar with clinical and neuropathologic diagnoses, current clinical and pathologic criteria for dementias, movement disorders, and CTE, with quantifying morphometric and immunohistochemistry aspects as assessed in different human brain regions. I have previously worked on the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Nun Study, and the Swedish Twin Study individuating and publishing novel data on peculiar aspects of the human brain resilience against the presence (autopsy-confirmed) of multiple pathology such as AD pathology in asymptomatic older subjects for dementia; and I started to be funded in support of genomic analyses using human brains. Now, as associate professor and deputy director of the BTR and Neuropathology Core at CNRM/USUHS I am really excited about the opportunity to apply all my skills and knowledge to the TBI field and to expand my studies on neurodegeneration getting direct access to the largest brain collection of Guam disease cases (including ALS, PD and AD) existing in the world. Thanks to the very rare, probably unique, opportunity to study Guam brains using new immunohistochemistry methods, genetic procedures and toxicological tools I am eager to possibly shed light on gene-environmental risk for sporadic ALS, and neurodegeneration in general.

1) Neurodegenerative diseases (dementias and movement disorders): clinical and clinical research aspects; 2) Neuropathology of dementias and movement disorders; 3) Traumatic brain injury-related dementias;