Six New Speakers @ 2011 SharpBrains Summit

We are proud to con­firm six addi­tion­al excel­lent Speak­ers at the upcom­ing 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit (remem­ber, this is a ful­ly vir­tu­al event so it requires no trav­el). Three Speak­ers are based in the US, two in the UK, one in Aus­tralia, and they tru­ly rep­re­sent a range of per­spec­tives and exper­tise to dis­cuss, as the Sum­mit tagline promis­es, Retool­ing Brain Health for the 21st Cen­tu­ry.

Pro­fes­sor Cary L. Coop­er chaired the Sci­ence Co-ordi­na­tion team of the Fore­sight Project on Men­tal Cap­i­tal and Well­be­ing. He is a Pro­fes­sor of Orga­ni­za­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy and Health at the Lan­cast­er Uni­ver­si­ty Man­age­ment School, Pres­i­dent of the British Asso­ci­a­tion for Coun­selling and Psy­chother­a­py, and Direc­tor and founder of Robert­son Coop­er Ltd. Prof. Coop­er is recog­nised as a world-lead­ing expert on stress and work­place issues, and received his BS and MBA degrees from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les, and his PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds.

Dr. Kei­th Wesnes is a Prac­tice Leader at Unit­ed BioSource Cor­po­ra­tion. In 1986 Pro­fes­sor Wesnes found­ed Cog­ni­tive Drug Research (acquired in 2009 by Unit­ed BioSource) to offer this sys­tem as a ser­vice in clin­i­cal tri­als. Pro­fes­sor Wesnes has pub­lished over 270 peer-reviewed research arti­cles as well as more than 20 chap­ters and lit­er­a­ture reviews. He holds Pro­fes­sor­ships at the Human Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­science Unit at Northum­bria Uni­ver­sity, New­cas­tle, UK and the Brain Sci­ences Insti­tute at Swin­burne Uni­ver­sity, Mel­bourne, Australia.

Steven Aldrich is Pres­i­dent and CEO of Posit Sci­ence, join­ing the com­pany from Intu­it where he cre­ated sig­nif­i­cant growth over 13 years in many roles. Steven was Pres­i­dent of Quick­en Insur­ance, a busi­ness he co-found­ed and sold to Intu­it. He has worked in the invest­ment bank­ing divi­sion of Alex. Brown & Sons and for McK­in­sey & Com­pany, com­pleted his MBA at the Stan­ford Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness, and he holds an AB in Physics from the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina. Steven is an avid sup­porter of the arts, and Pres­i­dent of the Board of the Bay Area Glass Institute.

Dr. Martha Farah is the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Neu­ro­science and Soci­ety at the Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia, and Annen­berg Pro­fes­sor of Nat­ural Sci­ences. Much of her career has been devot­ed to under­stand­ing the mech­a­nisms of vision, mem­ory, and exec­u­tive func­tion in the human brain. Her cur­rent inter­ests lie at the inter­face between cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science and “the real world,” includ­ing the effects of socioe­co­nomic adver­sity on children’s brain devel­op­ment and emerg­ing social and eth­i­cal issues in neu­ro­science (“neu­roethics”), mood reg­u­la­tion, and deci­sion making.

Dr Michael Valen­zuela is a Research Fel­low at the School of Psy­chi­a­try, Uni­ver­si­ty of New South Wales, and Leader of the Regen­er­a­tive Neu­ro­science Group at UNSW. His cur­rent research is aimed at under­stand­ing the com­pet­ing forces of neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty and degen­er­a­tion in the human brain, and includes stud­ies of adult stem cells, ani­mal mod­els, neu­roimag­ing, clin­i­cal tri­als and epi­demi­ol­o­gy. In 2006, he was award­ed the pres­ti­gious Eure­ka Prize for Med­ical Research for his research on the rela­tion­ship between demen­tia and com­plex men­tal activity.

Dhar­ma Singh Khal­sa, M.D. has been the Pres­i­dent and Med­ical Direc­tor of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foun­da­tion since 1993. He is a grad­u­ate of Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine in Oma­ha, Nebras­ka. Dr. Khal­sa received his train­ing in Anes­the­si­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San Fran­cis­co, where he was Chief Res­i­dent. He is also a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les Med­ical Acupunc­ture for Physi­cians Pro­gram and has stud­ied mind/body med­i­cine at Har­vard Med­ical School’s Mind/Body Med­ical Institute.

Learn more and Reg­is­ter to par­tic­i­pate in the 2011 Sharp­Brains Sum­mit by click­ing Here. Ear­ly-bird rates end on Feb­ru­ary 18th!