Lenore J. Launer

After receiving her Ph.D. in epidemiology from Cornell University and completing her post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health in the US, she coordinated European Dementia initiatives and research on migraine in the Netherlands.

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 investigate the links between brain disease and other common diseases of old age. To investigate these issues, research is conducted in large epidemiologic studies, including the HAAS, AGES-Reykjavik Study, and CARDIA. These resources allow testing in the general population, hypotheses on risk/protective factors and mechanisms during different periods in life, and at different stages of the disease processes leading to dementia.