Lenore J. Launer

After receiving her Ph.D. in epidemiology from Cornell University and completed her post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health in the US, in 1990 Dr. Launer moved to the Netherlands, where she held coordinated European Dementia initiatives and research on migraines. In 1999 she joined the National Institute on Aging, US, to lead the Neuroepidemiology Section of the Intramural Research Program. Studies in the Neuroepidemiology Section focus on understanding the contribution of genetic, inflammatory, metabolic, vascular, and hormonal factors to well characterized continuously and discretely measured sub-clinical and clinical phenotypes in brain disease and investigating the links between brain disease and other common diseases of old age.

Research is conducted using large epidemiologic studies, including the HAAS, GES-Reykjavik Study, and CARDIA, which allow testing in the general population, hypotheses on risk/protective factors and mechanisms identified in experimental and clinical studies. Dr. Launer has developed research resources to investigate the association of these physiologic measures to brain structure and function at different periods in life, and at different stages of the disease processes leading to dementia.