Speakers: Dr. Anthony E. Lang, Dr. Carmela Tartaglia & Dr. Gabor G. Kovacs
Dr. Anthony E. Lang (top-left), OC, M.D., FRCPC, FAAN, FCAHS, FRSC, is Professor and previous Director of the Division of Neurology at the University of Toronto. He holds the Jack Clark Chair for Parkinson’s Disease Research and the Lily Safra Chair in Movement Disorders. He is the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Program in Parkinson’s Disease, the Rossy Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) Program and the Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Clinic, Toronto Western Hospital and the University of Toronto. He is one of the most highly cited investigators in the field of Movement Disorders with more than 980 peer-reviewed publications and h-index of 180. His awards and distinctions include: Officer of the Order of Canada, 2010; Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, 2011; Honorary Member of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) 2014; the first MDS Pan-American Section Leadership Award, 2017; the Weston Brain Institute International Outstanding Achievement Award, 2018; the Dean’s Lifetime Achievement Award for global impact from University of Toronto, 2020 and the Jay Van Andel Award for Outstanding Achievement in Parkinson's Disease Research and the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize, 2022. In 2023, Research.com included him in their Ranking of Best Scientists in the field of Medicine.
Dr. Carmela Tartaglia (top-right), M.D., FRCPC, is a clinician-scientist at the University Health Network and University of Toronto. She maintains a cognitive/behavioral clinic within the UHN Memory Clinic where she sees patients with neurodegenerative diseases and those with multiple concussions who are at risk of developing a neurodegenerative disease. She is also part of the Rossy PSP Centre. She holds the Marion and Gerald Soloway Chair in Brain Injury and Concussion Research. She uses a multi-modal approach that combines imaging and biofluid biomarkers to better diagnose and understand the pathological substrates that cause cognitive, behavioral, and motoric dysfunction. The goal of her research program is to develop biomarkers for early detection of disease to bring precision medicine and targeted, early treatments to her patients.
Dr. Gabor G. Kovacs (bottom), M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Neuropathology and Neurology at the University of Toronto. He is Consultant Neuropathologist and Neurologist at the University Health Network (UHN), Rossy Chair for PSP Research, and a Principal Investigator at the Tanz Centre for Research in Neurodegenerative Disease and Krembil Brain Institute. He is also the Co-Director of the Rossy Program for PSP Research. Dr. Kovacs completed his medical training at the Semmelweis University (Budapest, Hungary) where he specialized in Neurology and Neuropathology and obtained a Ph.D. in Neuroscience. From 2004 to 2007, he was the Head of the Department of Neuropathology at the National Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Budapest, Hungary. From 2007 to 2019, he was an Associate Professor at the Institute of Neurology at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria. He was the leader of the Hungarian (2004-2019) and Austrian (2011-2019) Reference Center for Human Prion Diseases. Dr. Kovacs has also trained at Indiana University (2007) and University of Pennsylvania (2016 and 2017) as a visiting professor/scholar. His major research interest is the neuropathology of neurodegenerative diseases to identify early biomarkers and therapy targets. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and edited three books on Neuropathology.