Dr. Cuervo is considered a leader in the field of protein degradation in relation to biology of aging and has been invited to present her work in numerous national and international institutions, including name lectures as the Robert R. Konh Memorial Lecture, the NIH Director’s, the Roy Walford, the Feodor Lynen, the Margaret Pittman, the IUBMB Award, the David H. Murdoxk, the Gerry Aurbach, the SEBBM L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science, the C. Ronald Kahn Distinguished Lecture and the Harvey Society Lecture. She has organized and chaired international conferences on protein degradation and on aging, belongs to the editorial board of scientific journals in this topic, and is currently co-editor-in-chief of Aging Cell.

Dr. Cuervo has served in NIH advisory panels, special emphasis panels, and study sections, the NIA Scientific Council and the NIH Council of Councils and  has been recently elected member of the NIA Board of Scientific Counselors and member of the of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Deputy Director.. She has received numerous awards for the pioneerign work of her team such as  the 2005 P. Benson Award in Cell Biology, the 2005/8 Keith Porter Fellow in Cell Biology, the 2006 Nathan Shock Memorial Lecture Award, the 2008 Vincent Cristofalo Rising Start in Aging Award, the 2010 Bennett J. Cohen Award in Aging Biology, the 2012 Marshall S. Horwitz, MD Faculty Prize for Research Excellence and the 2015 Saul Korey Prize in Translational Medicine Science. She has also received twice the LaDonne Schulman Teaching Award. In 2015 she was elected International Academic of the Royal Academy of Medicine of the Valencia Community and in 2017, she was elected member of the Real Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Fisicas y Naturales. She was elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018 and member of the National Academy of Science in 2019.

Tony Wyss-Coray is the D.H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences and the Director of the Phil and Penny Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Stanford University. His lab studies brain aging and neurodegeneration with a focus on age-related cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. The Wyss-Coray research team discovered that circulatory blood factors can modulate brain structure and function and factors from young organisms can rejuvenate old brains. Current studies focus on the molecular basis of the systemic communication with the brain by employing a combination of genetic, cell biology, and –omics approaches in mice, and humans. Wyss-Coray has presented his ideas at Global TED, the Tencent WE Summit, the World Economic Forum, and he was voted Time Magazine’s “The Health Care 50” most influential people transforming health care in 2018. He co-founded Alkahest Inc. and several other companies targeting Alzheimer’s and neurodegeneration; he is a AAAS Fellow and has been the recipient of an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, a Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Association, and a NOMIS Foundation Award.

Inhee Mook-Jung is a South Korean Neuroscientist. She works on Alzheimer's disease pathogenesis. Professor Mook drew attention in 2006 for discovery that ERK1/2 proteins were involved in the regulation of beta amyloid, a substance that causes dementia. She also identified the mechanism and physiological function of beta amyloid. In particular, she identified the relationship between RAGE, a transport protein that delivers beta-amyloid into the brain, and the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, and based on this, she developed a system that can screen RAGE modulators.

She is leading the Alzlab (a research group on Alzheimer at Seoul National University College of Medicine) and since August 2020 she works as the Director of the Korea Dementia Research Center.

Michal Schwartz is an Israeli neuroimmunologist who carried out pioneering research on the relationship between the brain and the immune system. Her groundbreaking research on Alzheimer disease helped to overturn the long-standing notion that immunity should be suppressed in chronic neurodegenerative disease.

Schwartz earned a doctorate in immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, where she studied nerve regeneration, Schwartz returned to the Weizmann Institute, becoming a senior scientist in the department of neurobiology and later, a full professor. In 2016 she held the Maurice and Ilse Katz Professorial Chair in Neuroimmunology.

Schwartz was recognized with numerous honours throughout her career, including the ARVO (Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Inc.) Friedenwald Award (2002) and the Blumberg Outstanding Medical Research Scientist Prize (2015). In 2014 she was elected president of the International Society of Neuroimmunology and was made an honorary member of the World Immunopathology Organization.

Dr. Wrann studied veterinary medicine at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, the University of Cambridge, and Cornell University. She received her Ph.D. with Summa cum laude in Immunology from the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in 2008. She concluded her postdoctoral in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Spiegelman at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School. In April 2016 she joined the faculty of the CVRC to start her own laboratory. 

Dr. Wrann is an Assistant Professor in Medicine at the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. Wrann is also an affiliate of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. She is the recipient a K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award from the NINDS and the Hassenfeld Cardiovascular Research Scholar Award. Her research focuses on the beneficial effects of exercise and metabolism on the brain, and specifically secreted factors in exercise as potential drug targets.

Diana Jurk, Ph.D., investigates the mechanisms leading to aging and age-related diseases and has made important contributions to the fields of liver disease and neurodegeneration.

In the field of liver disease, Dr. Jurk demonstrated that inflammation is a key driver of cellular senescence in hepatocytes, contributing to impaired regenerative capacity, fibrosis and cancer. Additionally, Dr. Jurk was the first to demonstrate that clearance of senescent cells in aged, obese or diabetic mice can alleviate hepatic steatosis, suggesting that elimination of senescent cells can be a novel therapeutic strategy against nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

In the field of neurodegeneration, Dr. Jurk was the first to identify that during aging, post-mitotic neurons acquire a senescent-like phenotype, a phenomenon driven by telomere dysfunction. As part of her independent research program, Dr. Jurk investigated further the role of cellular senescence in the brain in the context of obesity. Her team was the first to demonstrate that senescent cells inhibit neurogenesis, contributing to obesity-induced anxiety-like behavior. This led to the novel concept that senolytic drugs are a potential new therapeutic avenue for treating neuropsychiatric disorders, such as anxiety and depression.