Emory Researcher Receives Prestigious National Alzheimer’s Award

A coalition of leading Alzheimer’s disease organizations has awarded a “Tomorrow’s Leaders in Alzheimer’s Disease Research” award to James Lah, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology, Emory University School of Medicine. The award will be presented Wednesday, July 30 during the International Alzheimer’s Disease Congress in Chicago.

Lah is one of three inaugural recipients of the award honoring the pioneering contributions of George Glenner and Leon Thal. The prize recognizes promising investigators who have made pivotal contributions to early detection, treatment and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.

The sponsoring organizations, the Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute modeled the $100,000 awards on other genius grants, and the funds may be used for any purpose at the discretion of the awardees.

“We are making tremendous strides in Alzheimer’s research and this award, which is a great honor, will allow my lab to continue on that path,” says Lah, the clinical core leader of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Emory.

Lah intends to use the award money to support the Registry for Remembrance, a new Atlanta-based, community-academic partnership that seeks to improve understanding of genetic risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease among African Americans.

Other winners are:

* Sterling C. Johnson, PhD -- associate professor of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
* Dora Marta Kovacs, PhD -- associate professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School