Project Leaders

Steven Arnold is the Translational Neurology Head and Managing Director of the Interdisciplinary Brain Center, a collaboration of  the Departments of Neurology, Psychiatry and the Martinos Center for Neuroimaging. Its mission is to facilitate the discovery, development, and implementation of promising therapeutics and associated diagnostics for individuals with complex brain disorders that affect cognition, behavior and emotion. Neurodegenerative diseases are major disease interests of the Interdisciplinary Brain Center.

Arnold has conducted longstanding research on neurodegenerative disease pathology, molecular biomarkers and therapeutics for cognitive decline and psychiatric syndromes in late life and has led broad clinical and translational research programs. He has authored over 300 scientific articles, reviews and chapters. Current scientific interests include biomarkers in brain aging and dementias, metabolic factors driving dementia, and protective factors that account for cognitive resilience, all towards accelerating therapeutics discovery and development in early phase and proof-of-concept clinical trials for neurocognitive disorders.

Susan Bookheimer is a clinical neuropsychologist specializing in pre-surgical and intraoperative assessments for patients with epilepsy, brain tumors, vascular lesions, Parkinson's disease, and dementia. Her research uses brain imaging, particularly functional MRI, applied to a wide range of disorders including autism and Alzheimers, as well as in typical development and normal aging.

Bookheimer served as the AABC UCLA site principal investigator through December 1, 2023. As of July 1, 2024, Bookheimer retired from her full-time faculty position at UCLA transitioning her AABC UCLA MPI leadership role to Robert Welsh, MD.

Dara G. Ghahremani, PhD is a research professor and neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences and Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Behavior at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles). His research aims to understand self-regulation, its brain basis, how it changes across the lifespan, and is weakened in people with mental health problems. He also examines how self-regulation may be strengthened using pharmacological and behavioral interventions. He uses multiple neuroimaging techniques, including functional MRI (fMRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET). His studies examine individuals across the lifespan, from children and adolescents to older adults, and include both healthy control participants and those with mental health problems, especially substance use disorders. The interventions employed for potential enhancement of self-regulation include pharmacological agents that show promise for enhancing cognitive function and non-pharmacological approaches that promote autonomic balance. Dr. Ghahremani received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the Psychology Department at Stanford University and postdoctoral training at UCLA.

Helen Lavretsky is a Professor In-Residence in the Department of Psychiatry and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, a geriatric integrative psychiatrist with a federally funded research program in geriatric depression, cognition, and integrative mental health (NIMH, NCCIH, DOD, PCORI, and other). She directs the late-life mood, stress and wellness research program, and the integrative psychiatry and long-COVID clinical and research programs. She is the recipient of the Career Development Award from NIMH and the NCCIH, and other prestigious research awards. Her current research studies include investigations of mind-body therapies for mild cognitive impairment, chronic pain, and depression, and long-COVID syndrome. She is the Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, and the Fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, and the recipient of the Distinguished Investigator awards for research in geriatric psychiatry from the American College of Psychiatrists and the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry. She is the President of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry.

Pauline M. Maki is Professor of Psychiatry, Psychology and Obstetrics & Gynecology; Director of the Women’s Mental Health Research Program, and Research Director at the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). For the past 25 years, she has led a program of NIH-funded research on women’s health, particularly women’s mental and cognitive health. She has more than 200 scientific publications on this topic. Her research addresses important issues in women’s health such as how hormonal changes at menopause and menopause symptoms affect women’s cognitive function, brain health and mood at midlife and the effect of menopausal hormone therapy and non-hormonal menopause intervention on cognition, brain health and mood. She is credited with the first neuroimaging study of estrogen and brain function in women.

Maki is past president of the North American Menopause Society (NAMS), Treasurer of the International Menopause Society and past chair of the Society for Women’s Health Research Interdisciplinary Network on Alzheimer's Disease. She won the 2018 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women’s Association, the Thomas B. Clarkson Outstanding Clinical and Basic Science Research Award from the NAMS, and the 2023 Health Education Visionary Award from the Society for Women’s Health Research. She has won several NIH awards for her research and service, serves as a research and career mentor to many students and junior faculty, serves on executive committees for several women’s health advisory boards, and is a frequent international and national speaker. Her work is widely cited in the media, including in such outlets as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fox News, National Public Radio, BBC, the Today Show, NBC News, ABC News, and the Guardian.

The overarching aim of David Salat’s work is to understand mechanisms of neural disease and to implement novel approaches to reduce the impact of disease on the brain, cognition and clinical status. Clinically, there are two main clinical foci to his research. At the MGH Martinos Center, he directs the Brain Aging and Dementia Laboratory, with a research focus on understanding systemic and neural mechanisms of age-associated cognitive decline and dementia. A major focus of this work is to understand cerebrovascular contributions to brain aging and dementia. He is also the MGH site Principal Investigator for the Human Connectome Project – Mapping the Human Connectome with Typical Aging multisite effort.