Claudia Satizabal, Ph.D.

Claudia SATIZABAL, Ph.D., is an Epidemiologist currently working as an Assistant Professor at UT Health San Antonio and the Biggs Institute, where she leads the Population Neuroscience Core. Her research focuses on the lifestyle and genetic determinants influencing abnormal brain aging, stroke, cognitive decline, and dementia.

In her current work, Dr. Satizabal studies the impact of midlife obesity on the risk of late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease and related endophenotypes, the validation of biomarkers for vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia, understanding the impact of mitochondrial DNA copy number and heteroplasmy in cognitive aging and dementia, and the identification of a microbiome signature for Alzheimer’s disease.

She is also actively involved in national and international consortia, including the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed), the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), and the Markers for Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (MarkVCID).