Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

 

Meet our world-class Speaker Roster

Confirmed Speakers

Alvaro Fernandez

Alvaro Fernandez, CEO of SharpBrains

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, named a Young Glob­al Leader by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum, runs Sharp­Brains, an inde­pen­dent mar­ket research firm track­ing health and per­for­mance appli­ca­tions of brain sci­ence. He has been quot­ed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Jour­nal, and CNN, among oth­ers. Mr. Fer­nan­dez is the co-author of “The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fit­ness: How to Opti­mize Brain Health and Per­for­mance at Any Age” (trans­lat­ed into Span­ish, Pol­ish and Japan­ese), and the Edi­tor-in-chief of Sharp­Brains’ recent mar­ket report on Per­va­sive Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy and IP. Alvaro has an MBA and MA in Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and a BA in Eco­nom­ics from Uni­ver­si­dad de Deusto in his native Spain.

Anu Acharya, Founder and CEO of Map My Genome

Anu is the CEO at Map My Genome, which just won the Inno­v­a­tive Health­care Start­up award at the 2015 VCcir­cle Health­care Awards. A mol­e­c­u­lar diag­nos­tics com­pa­ny, Map My Genome offers prog­nos­tics and diag­nos­tics tests, and also dis­trib­utes dig­i­tal brain health solu­tions in India. Anu was named a Young Glob­al Leader by the World Eco­nom­ic Forum (WEF) and serves on the WEF’s Glob­al Agen­da Coun­cil as a mem­ber of the Per­son­al­ized and Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cine. She served as a gov­ern­ing board mem­ber at CSIR (Coun­cil for Sci­en­tif­ic and Indus­tri­al Research) and cur­rent­ly serves as a gov­ern­ing board mem­ber at the NIBMG. Trained at pre­mier insti­tu­tions such as the IIT Kharag­pur, India (IIT) and Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois, she has been award­ed sev­er­al awards by Red Her­ring Mag­a­zine, Biospec­trum, and others.

Dr. Bruce Wexler, Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at Yale University

A Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at Yale Uni­ver­sity, Dr. Wexler won the NIH Director’s Award for high impact, high inno­va­tion, par­a­digm chang­ing med­ical research, 2012–2016. Dr. Wexler is founder and chief sci­en­tist of C8 Sci­ences and cre­ated C8 Kids. He is also the direc­tor of the Neu­rocog­ni­tive Research Lab­o­ra­tory at the Con­necti­cut Men­tal Health Cen­ter, and a facil­i­ta­tor for the Coun­cil of Reli­gious Insti­tu­tions of the Holy Land, design­ing and man­ag­ing a U.S. State Depart­ment fund­ed study of how “the oth­er” is por­trayed in Israeli and Pales­tin­ian school books.
Charlie Hartwell

Charlie Hartwell, Operating Partner at the Bridge Builders Collaborative

Char­lie helps fund and sup­port the visions of social entre­pre­neurs who have scal­able busi­ness mod­els for appli­ca­tions, prac­tices, prod­ucts and tools that build bridges for mind-train­ing. He is a Har­vard Busi­ness School grad­u­ate who has led, found­ed, run and worked in orga­ni­za­tions in 16 dif­fer­ent indus­tries. Pre­vi­ous­ly Char­lie was Pres­i­dent of Ideas to Go, an inno­va­tion-con­sult­ing firm. His career has includ­ed Wall Street, cor­po­rate mar­ket­ing stints at HJ Heinz and Pills­bury. In 1998, he formed your­ex­pe­di­tion, the first for-prof­it expe­di­tion com­pa­ny in U.S. his­to­ry, launched by the his­toric Ban­croft Arne­sen Expe­di­tion across Antarc­ti­ca by polar explor­ers Ann Ban­croft and Liv Arnesen.

Chris Berka, CEO and Co-Founder of Advanced Brain Monitoring (ABM)

Chris has over 25 years expe­ri­ence man­ag­ing clin­i­cal research and devel­op­ing and com­mer­cial­iz­ing new tech­nolo­gies, is co-inven­tor of eleven patent­ed and 14 patent-pend­ing tech­nolo­gies, and served as the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor or co-inves­ti­ga­tor for grants & con­tracts award­ed by the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, DARPA, ONR and NSF that pro­vid­ed more than $30 mil­lion of research funds to ABM. She received her BA with dis­tinc­tion in Psychology/Biology at Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty and com­plet­ed grad­u­ate stud­ies in Neu­ro­science at UCSD.

Conny Lin, Research Scientist at FitBrains (a Rosetta Stone company)

Con­ny Lin, M.Sc., is a Research Sci­en­tist at Fit­Brains, a com­put­er­ized cog­ni­tive train­ing pro­gram by Roset­ta Stone, and a Ph.D. can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia, where her research focus­es on the genet­ic com­po­nents of learn­ing and mem­o­ry. At Fit Brains, she man­ages research col­lab­o­ra­tions and con­ducts in-house research pro­grams. She has received numer­ous awards, includ­ing a Sci­ence Pol­i­cy Fel­low­ship at the British Colum­bia Min­istry of Health, where she advo­cates for the val­ue of big data in health pol­i­cy decisions.

Conor Russomanno, Co-Founder and CEO of OpenBCI

Conor is an artist/ engi­neer liv­ing in NYC. He is an avid brain-com­put­er inter­face enthu­si­ast and has been work­ing with commercial/ DIY BCIs inces­sant­ly for the last few years. on top of being a part-time fac­ul­ty at Par­sons School of Design, teach­ing Cre­ativ­i­ty & Com­pu­ta­tion and a course titled The Dig­i­tal Self. He holds an MFA Design & Tech­nol­o­gy from Par­sons School of Design, and a BS in Civ­il Engi­neer­ing & Engi­neer­ing Mechan­ics from Colum­bia University.
Danny_Dankner

Danny Dankner, CEO of Applied Cognitive Engineering (ACE)

Dan­ny runs Applied Cog­ni­tive Engi­neer­ing (ACE), a cog­ni­tive sim­u­la­tions firm that devel­ops spe­cial­ized “brain gyms” to enhance the per­for­mance in high-pres­sure domains. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Mr. Dankn­er was on the found­ing team of Kinet­i­ca Inter­net­ting Solu­tions, direct­ed the Project Man­age­ment activ­i­ties at Mobile­S­pear (a devel­op­er of a mobile ser­vices plat­form), lead­ing projects in Sin­ga­pore, Spain and Israel, and had a key role in the merg­er of G‑sites and Box Inter­ac­tive, lead­ing to the cre­ation of Scepia Inter­net Solu­tions — Israel’s largest solu­tion provider. Dan­ny holds an MBA in Mar­ket­ing & IT and LL.B, both from Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty and an Israeli Bar Diplo­ma. He is a cer­ti­fied sys­tem analyst.

Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa, Pres­i­dent of the Alzheimer’s Research and Pre­ven­tion Foundation

Dr. Khal­sa grad­u­ated from Creighton Uni­ver­sity School of Med­i­cine in 1975, and received his post­grad­u­ate 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. Dr. Khal­sa is board cer­ti­fied in anes­the­si­ol­ogy and pain management
Douglas Ziedonis

Dr. Douglas Ziedonis, Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School

Dou­glas Ziedo­nis, M.D., M.P.H., is also Pres­i­dent of UMass Memo­r­i­al Behav­ioral Health Ser­vices. He is inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized for his research address­ing co-occur­ring addic­tion and men­tal ill­ness, in par­tic­u­lar tobac­co and food addic­tion. He is Direc­tor of the UMass Cen­ter of Excel­lence (COE) in Addic­tions and Co-Direc­tor of the UMass COE in Neu­ro­sciences. He and his research team have been well-fund­ed by NIH, SAMHSA, Foun­da­tions, Vet­er­an Affairs (VA), and state research grants, and his stud­ies include devel­op­ing and eval­u­at­ing med­ica­tion and behav­ioral ther­a­py approach­es and orga­ni­za­tion­al change interventions.

Eduardo Briceño, CEO of Mind­set Works

Eduar­do is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mind­set Works, which he start­ed with Car­ol Dweck, Lisa Black­well and oth­ers, to help peo­ple devel­op as moti­vat­ed and effec­tive learn­ers. Pri­or to Mind­set Works, Eduar­do was an Edu­ca­tion Pio­neers Fel­low at New Lead­ers, a Prin­ci­pal with the Sprout Group,and an ana­lyst with Don­ald­son, Lufkin & Jen­rette. Eduar­do holds MBA and M.A. in Edu­ca­tion degrees from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and bachelor’s degrees in Eco­nom­ics and in Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Glenn Morrison, Director of Clinical Trials at Lumos Labs

Glenn Mor­ri­son, PhD, is the Direc­tor of Clin­i­cal Tri­als at Lumos Labs. Co-author of the just pub­lished paper “Reli­a­bil­i­ty and valid­i­ty of the Neu­roCog­ni­tive Per­for­mance Test, a web-based neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal assess­ment,” Glenn brings to Lumos Labs his proven clin­i­cal devel­op­ment expe­ri­ence design­ing, imple­ment­ing and con­duct­ing clin­i­cal tri­als in US and Inter­na­tion­al­ly. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was the Prin­ci­pal Clin­i­cal Sci­en­tist and Glob­al Devel­op­ment Team Lead CNS at Genentech/Roche. Glenn com­plet­ed his PhD in Neu­ro­science at Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto.

Dr. Graeme Moffat, Direc­tor of Sci­en­tific & Reg­u­la­tory Affairs at InteraXon

Graeme leads health and neu­ro­science R&D at Inter­aX­on, the mak­er of Muse: the brain sens­ing head­band. Pri­or to join­ing Inter­aX­on, he served as Man­ag­ing Edi­tor of the Fron­tiers jour­nal series under the Nature Pub­lish­ing Group, cov­er­ing Neu­ro­science, Neu­rol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try. Grae­me’s expe­ri­ence includes research engi­neer­ing with CNRS (France) and Neurelec/Oticon Med­ical on hear­ing aids and cochlear implants, as well as clin­i­cal tri­al devel­op­ment. He holds a PhD in neu­ro­science from Uni­ver­sité Aix-Mar­seille and a BSc in physics from McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty, and is cur­rent­ly a fel­low of the Ontario Cen­tres of Excel­lence in Toronto.

Ita­mar Lesu­isse, CEO & Co-Founder of Peak

Ita­mar Lesu­isse is the co-founder and CEO at Peak (pre­vi­ously Brain­Bow), a mobile brain train­ing plat­form with glob­al aspi­ra­tions launched in Asia Pacif­ic and Europe to great suc­cess. Pri­or to Brain­Bow, Ita­mar was founder at Scov­ille and Kukunu, sold in 2013, worked on Euro­pean ePay­ments at VISA, launched new prod­uct lines in the UK at Amazon.com, and worked at The Boston Con­sult­ing Group. He hols mul­ti­ple patents and Mas­ter in CS and Elec­tron­ics Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­sity of Ottawa.
JennBuss

Dr. Jennifer Buss, Assistant Vice President of Science and Technology at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies

Dr. Buss over­sees the con­tract work and per­son­nel in the S&T Pol­icy Divi­sion at the Potomac Insti­tute, man­ag­ing a vari­ety of OSD pro­grams includ­ing an out­reach effort for the Depart­ment of Defense to the start-up com­mu­nity. Addi­tion­ally, Dr. Buss is the Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Stud­ies (CNS) at the Potomac Insti­tute for Pol­icy Stud­ies, a cen­ter ded­i­cat­ed to ascrib­ing mean­ing­ful pol­i­cy solu­tions to one of the most influ­en­tial sci­ence and tech­nolo­gies of our time. Dr. Buss earned a doc­tor­ate in bio­chem­istry from the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land Depart­ment of Chem­istry and Bio­chem­istry. Dr. Buss received her BS in bio­chem­istry with a minor in math­e­mat­ics from the Uni­ver­sity of Delaware.
Joan_Severson

Joan Severson, President of Digital Artefacts

Joan Sev­er­son is the Pres­i­dent of Dig­i­tal Arte­facts, the devel­op­er of iPad app Brain­Base­line. The firm spe­cial­izes in research and devel­op­ment of inter­ac­tive com­put­er graph­ics and 3D mod­el­ing and real-time visu­al­iza­tion and sim­u­la­tion of inter­ac­tive geo-spe­cif­ic and oth­er vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments. Joan has col­lab­o­rat­ed with and/or direct­ed research and devel­op­ment of sci­en­tif­ic ani­ma­tions, vir­tu­al envi­ron­ments, user inter­faces and soft­ware for the Smith­son­ian NMAH, the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences, NASA, NOAA, the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, behav­ioral researchers (psy­chol­o­gists and neu­rol­o­gists) cor­po­rate and uni­ver­si­ty research and devel­op­ment organizations.

José Barrios, Co-Founder & CEO of Cognilab

José Bar­rios is a Mex­i­can-born entre­pre­neur with a pas­sion for the mind, brain and machines, work­ing with the world’s top uni­ver­si­ties to design a new sys­tem to allow psy­chol­o­gists to col­lect, store, and study the human mind through crowd­sourc­ing. Cog­ni­lab is a new research suite for the sci­en­tif­ic study of the human mind, pow­er­ing some of world’s top research lab­o­ra­to­ries at Har­vard, McGill and MIT, among oth­ers, with a mis­sion to stream­line the cre­ation, dis­tri­b­u­tion and analy­sis of advanced behav­iour­al and brain sci­ence research.

Kate Sul­li­van, Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter at Wal­ter Reed National Mil­i­tary Med­ical Center

Kate Sul­li­van, M.S., CCC-SLP, CBIS, is the Direc­tor of the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter, Wal­ter Reed Nation­al Mil­i­tary Med­ical Cen­ter. She com­pleted her under­grad­u­ate and grad­u­ate degrees in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sci­ences and Dis­or­ders at James Madi­son Uni­ver­sity. She has been a speech-lan­guage pathol­o­gist at Wal­ter Reed Army Med­ical Cen­ter for 10 years where she recent­ly helped launch the Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter (BFC), locat­ed in the WRAMC’s Mil­i­tary Advanced Train­ing Cen­ter, to com­ple­ment tra­di­tional care approaches.
 MaddyGoodkind

Dr. Madeleine S Goodkind, staff psychologist at the New Mexico VA Health Care System

Madeleine Good­kind is a staff psy­chol­o­gist at the New Mex­i­co VA Health Care Sys­tem and an Assis­tant Clin­i­cal Pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of New Mex­i­co School of Med­i­cine. Her clin­i­cal work focus­es on treat­ing vet­er­ans with post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der. She has pub­lished sci­en­tif­ic arti­cles on emo­tion­al and neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of psy­chi­atric and neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions and on trans­di­ag­nos­tic process­es in psy­chi­atric ill­ness­es. She com­plet­ed her PhD in clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gy and a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship at the Palo Alto VA and Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty School of Medicine.

Dr. Majid Fotuhi, Chair­man of Mem­o­syn Neu­rol­ogy Institute

Dr. Majid Fotuhi is Chair­man of Mem­o­syn Neu­rol­ogy Insti­tute, Med­ical Direc­tor of Neu­roGrow Brain Fit­ness Cen­ter, and Affil­i­ate Staff at Johns Hop­kins Howard Coun­ty Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal. Dr. Fotuhi received his MD degree from Har­vard Med­ical School, and his doc­tor­al PhD degree in Neu­ro­science from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty School of Med­i­cine. He lec­tures at Har­vard Med­ical School, and has been an active mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Neu­rol­o­gy, Amer­i­can Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion, Inter­na­tion­al Brain Research Orga­ni­za­tion, and Soci­ety for Neuroscience.

Mark Baxter, General Manager of FitBrains (a Rosetta Stone company)

Mark Bax­ter is the new GM of Fit­Brains, which was acquired by Roset­ta Stone in Decem­ber of 2013. Pri­or to the acqui­si­tion, Mark was VP Prod­uct & Cre­ative and Co-founder of Viv­i­ty Labs, a devel­op­er of life-rel­e­vant gam­ing expe­ri­ences across Mobile, Web & Social plat­forms, the cre­ator of Fit Brains, a pop­u­lar casu­al brain gam­ing plat­form. As some­one who believes that games have great poten­tial to be a pow­er­ful medi­um for self-improve­ment, he has been in the games & dig­i­tal media indus­try for more than 13 years as a design­er and pro­duc­er of AAA, casu­al, mobile and social games.

Michael Meagher, Pres­i­dent of Cogniciti

Michael Meagher runs Cog­nic­i­ti, the cog­ni­tive health spin-off from research cen­ter and hos­pi­tal Bay­crest up in Ontario, Cana­da. His expe­ri­ence has been a mix of ser­i­al entre­pre­neur and cor­po­rate exec­u­tive. His career began with a 9‑year stint in Proc­ter & Gam­ble, and con­tin­ued by run­ning 5 suc­cess­ful busi­ness ser­vices firms where he helped cre­ate more than 3,000 net new jobs. Michael has been a lec­tur­er at the Ivey School of Busi­ness, co-authored a book on envi­ron­men­tal mar­ket­ing, man­aged a suc­cess­ful fed­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, chaired and served on numer­ous Boards, and received mul­ti­ple awards from the Young Pres­i­dents Organization.

Nikhil Sri­ra­man, IP Analyst at SharpBrains

Nikhil Sri­ra­man is a patent attor­ney admit­ted to prac­tice before the Unit­ed States Patent and Trade­mark Office (USPTO). Nikhil has held posi­tions at the USPTO, IP law firms and in-house at For­tune 500 com­pa­nies. He cur­rently serves as Primal’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty, as well as Sharp­Brains’ Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Ana­lyst. With degrees by DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Law and Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, Nikhil’s pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence includes legal and engi­neer­ing work at Ford and John­son Controls.

Dr. Peter Delahunt, Research Scientist at Posit Science

At Posit Sci­ence, Dr. Delahunt helps devel­op core com­put­er-based train­ing exer­cis­es for Brain­HQ and oth­er Posit Sci­ence appli­ca­tions. His research focus­es on the effects of aging on visu­al per­cep­tion, inves­ti­gat­ing cog­ni­tive train­ing options for dri­ving safe­ty in dri­vers both young and old, and revers­ing declines in visu­al per­for­mance using com­put­er-based train­ing in nor­mal aging and clin­i­cal pop­u­la­tions. He earned his PhD in Psy­chol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, San­ta Barbara.

Brig. General Pete Palmer (Retired), Director of the EDGE Innovation Network

Pri­or to join­ing Gen­er­al Dynam­ics Mis­sion Sys­tems, Pete per­formed over 32 years of active ser­vice as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer in the Unit­ed States Army, retir­ing in 2008 as a Brigadier Gen­er­al. Dur­ing his career with the Army, Pete was assigned to serve as the Direc­tor of Accel­er­at­ed Capa­bil­i­ties Devel­op­ment for the Army Capa­bil­i­ties Inte­gra­tion Cen­ter (ARCIC), where he helped cham­pi­on the Army’s push into under­stand­ing and improv­ing the rela­tion­ship between the sol­dier and tech­nol­o­gy. Pete’s expe­ri­ence as a thought leader in Human Dimen­sion has kept him at the fore­front of tech­nol­o­gy dis­cov­ery and allowed him to inter­act with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), indus­try and academia

J. Peter Kissinger, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the AAA Foun­da­tion for Traf­fic Safety

J. Peter Kissinger joined the Foun­da­tion as CEO in May of 2002. The Foun­da­tion is a pub­licly sup­ported, char­i­ta­ble research and edu­ca­tional orga­ni­za­tion that was found­ed by AAA in 1947. Its focus is on “sav­ing lives through research and edu­ca­tion.” Pri­or to the Foun­da­tion, Peter was the Senior Vice Pres­i­dent of the Civ­il Engi­neer­ing Research Foun­da­tion (CERF), the research arm of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety of Civ­il Engi­neers (ASCE), and was also employed by the Nation­al Trans­porta­tion Safe­ty Board for twelve years, serv­ing the last eight as Man­ag­ing Direc­tor. Peter has a B.S. in Engi­neer­ing from the Coast Guard Acad­e­my and an M.S. in Oper­a­tions Research from The George Wash­ing­ton University.

Peter Freer, Inven­tor and CEO of Freer Logic

Mr. Freer has cre­at­ed and patent­ed body-based brain mon­i­tor­ing rat­ed #1 by Frost & Sul­li­van in 2015 for “New Prod­uct Inno­va­tion” in Cog­ni­tive Biosen­sors for Auto­mo­tive Mar­ket. His team is work­ing with major auto­mo­tive and con­sumer elec­tron­ics com­pa­nies to inte­grate the tech­nol­o­gy to bet­ter mon­i­tor dri­ver dis­trac­tion and drowsi­ness. He is co-author of a white paper on Human Per­for­mance Man­age­ment with the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency of the Unit­ed Nations, and holds 5 patents (with oth­ers pend­ing) relat­ed to human cog­ni­tion and thought tech­nol­o­gy train­ing. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Peter Freer, MEd, cre­at­ed Play Atten­tion, an inter­ac­tive neu­ro­feed­back learn­ing system.

Dr. Peter Reiner, Co-Founder, National Core for Neu­roethics at the Uni­ver­sity of British Columbia

Dr. Reiner’s cur­rent focus lies in Tech­nolo­gies of the Extend­ed Mind and in the area of neu­roethics, spe­cial­iz­ing in the non-med­ical impact of tech­nol­ogy on the brain, with par­tic­u­lar inter­ests in the neu­roethics of cog­ni­tive enhance­ment as well as the impact of mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety upon brain func­tion. Dr. Rein­er has a dis­tin­guished track record as a bench research sci­en­tist study­ing the neu­ro­bi­ol­ogy of behav­ioural states and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease, and also was the Pres­i­dent & CEO of Active Pass Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, a drug dis­cov­ery com­pany that he found­ed to tack­le the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Peter White­house, Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy at Case West­ern Reserve University

Peter J. White­house, MD, PhD is Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy as well as for­mer Pro­fes­sor of Cog­ni­tive Sci­ence, Psy­chi­a­try, Neu­ro­science, Psy­chol­ogy, Nurs­ing, Orga­ni­za­tional Behav­ior, Bioethics and His­tory. With col­leagues he dis­cov­ered fun­da­men­tal aspects of the cholin­er­gic pathol­ogy in Alzheimer’s and relat­ed demen­tias. He is clin­i­cally active at Uni­ver­sity Hos­pi­tals of Cleve­land in the Joseph Foley Elder Health Cen­ter at Fairhill Cen­ter, and his research inter­ests include the devel­op­ment of more effec­tive treat­ments for indi­vid­u­als with cog­ni­tive impair­ment, includ­ing drugs and non-bio­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions, eth­i­cal issues in the med­ical pro­fes­sion and inte­gra­tive health care systems

Dr. Randy McIn­tosh, Vicepresident of Research and Direc­tor of Baycrest’s Rot­man Research Institute

Dr. McIn­tosh is a pio­neer in the study of how dif­fer­ent parts of the brain work togeth­er to bring about the wide range of human men­tal oper­a­tions, com­bin­ing mod­ern func­tion­al neu­roimag­ing meth­ods with math­e­mat­i­cal mod­el­ing to char­ac­ter­ize changes in brain net­work dynam­ics. He also has exten­sive expe­ri­ence with most neu­roimag­ing tech­nolo­gies. At Rotan, Dr McIn­tosh lever­ages the sci­en­tif­ic exper­tise at his home insti­tute to con­tribute to the next five years of Brain NRG. In par­tic­u­lar, research in stroke recov­ery will pro­vide access to patient data to help build the Vir­tu­al Brain–which is poised to deliv­er the first open sim­u­la­tion of the human brain based on indi­vid­ual large-scale connectivity.

Richard Varn, Presidential Appointee at the Center for Advanced Technology and Neuroscience at Educational Testing Services (ETS)

Richard is focused on role of pre­dic­tive ana­lyt­ics to help edu­ca­tion gain proof of out­come and proof of val­ue, and to gain effi­cien­cy in edu­ca­tion­al set­tings. In addi­tion to work in build­ing a Cen­ter for Advanced Tech­nol­o­gy and Neu­ro­science, he serves on the Work Force Readi­ness busi­ness devel­op­ment team and over­sees Enter­prise Resilien­cy Man­age­ment. Pre­vi­ous­ly, Richard was the Chief Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer for the City of San Anto­nio and the State of Iowa, among oth­er responsibilities.
Roy Hamilton

Dr. Roy Hamilton, Assistant Professor in Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Hamil­ton grad­u­at­ed from Har­vard Med­ical School and the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in 2001. Dur­ing his med­ical train­ing he pur­sued train­ing in the field of non­in­va­sive brain stim­u­la­tion and earned a mas­ters degree from Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Health Sci­ences and Tech­nol­o­gy with a spe­cif­ic focus on neu­ro­plas­tic­i­ty in blind and sight­ed indi­vid­u­als. He com­plet­ed res­i­den­cy in Neu­rol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in 2005 and a fel­low­ship in Cog­ni­tive Neu­rol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia in 2006.

Dr. Ruth Wolever, Chief Sci­ence Offi­cer at eMindful

In addi­tion to her role with eMind­ful, Dr. Wolever is a clin­i­cal health psy­chol­o­gist and Direc­tor of Research for Duke Inte­gra­tive Med­i­cine. She con­ducts research on the inte­gra­tion of mind and body treat­ments into main­stream med­i­cine. She also explores appli­ca­tions to improve sleep, eat­ing behav­iors, weight man­age­ment, dia­betes con­trol, and car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk fac­tors, along with oth­er health con­di­tions. The cur­ricu­lum she has devel­oped and test­ed with rig­or­ous aca­d­e­m­ic method­ol­o­gy has been used by thou­sands of peo­ple who par­tic­i­pate in eMindful’s programs.

Tara Thiagarajan, Chairman and Managing Director of Madura Microfinance

Tara’s inter­est lies in under­stand­ing large-scale human sys­tems for the pur­pose of devel­op­ing scal­able, for-prof­it solu­tions that dri­ve progress. She has a BA in Math­e­mat­ics from Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty, an MBA from the Kel­logg School of Man­age­ment at North­west­ern„ and a Ph.D. in Neu­ro­science from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. She did her post­doc­tor­al research in neur­al net­work behav­iour at the Sec­tion for Crit­i­cal Brain Dynam­ics at the NIH and is a vis­it­ing sci­en­tist at Nation­al Cen­tre for Bio­log­i­cal Sci­ences.. She is also an Advi­so­ry Group Mem­ber at Ashoka Changemakers.
Tommy Sagroun

Tommy Sagroun, CEO of CogniFit

Tom­my Sagroun is the CEO of Cog­niFit, where he began as the Glob­al Prod­uct Man­ag­er over­see­ing client rela­tion­ships, includ­ing the glob­al roll­out of a part­ner­ship with Bay­er to help patients with Mul­ti­ple Scle­ro­sis (MS). He start­ed his career in bank­ing retail at Soci­ete Gen­erale in Paris, and spent sev­er­al years at Deloitte & Touche where he worked in M&A and audit­ing. He lat­er left Paris and joined the New York branch of Bar­clais where he was respon­si­ble for busi­ness devel­op­ment in the biotech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware indus­tries. Mr. Sagroun earned a Mas­ter in Account­ing and Finance from the Acad­e­my of Paris, France.

Dr. Walter Greenleaf, Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab

Wal­ter Green­leaf, PhD is a neu­ro­sci­en­tist and a med­ical prod­uct devel­op­er, known inter­na­tion­al­ly as a pio­neer in the med­ical appli­ca­tion of vir­tu­al envi­ron­ment tech­nol­o­gy. He recent­ly served as the Direc­tor for the Mind Divi­sion, Stan­ford Cen­ter on Longevi­ty, where his focus was on advanc­ing research on age-relat­ed changes in cog­ni­tion. He is cur­rent­ly a Dis­tin­guished Vis­it­ing Schol­ar at Stan­ford University’s Vir­tu­al Human Inter­ac­tion Lab, Chief Sci­ence Offi­cer at Pear Ther­a­peu­tics and Cog­ni­tive Leap, and Med­ical Direc­tor for AppliedVR.

Zack Lynch, Founder and Executive Director of the Neurotechnology Industry Organization

Zack Lynch is the founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO), the trade group that lob­bies and advo­cates on behalf of com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, brain research insti­tutes, patient advo­ca­cy groups, and brain research foun­da­tions world­wide. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he co-found­ed Neu­roIn­sights and sev­er­al enter­prise soft­ware com­pa­nies in prof­it opti­miza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive fore­cast­ing. Zack received an MA in Eco­nom­ic Geog­ra­phy, BS in Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gy and BS in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence, all from UCLA.