Henry Brodaty, Australia
Professor Brodaty is a researcher, clinician, policy advisor and advocate for people with dementia and their carers. At UNSW Sydney (the University of New South Wales), he is Scientia Professor of Ageing and Mental Health, Co-Director of the Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, and Director, Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration. He has over 500 publications in refereed journals, is senior psychogeriatrician and Head of the Memory Clinic at POW Hospital. He is an officer of the Order of Australia and a Ryman Prize winner. Prof. Brodaty is one of the speakers in Plenary 1, on 24 October.
Dag Aarsland, Norway
Professor Dag Aarsland is Head of Department of Old Age Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre Dementia Theme Lead. Before this post, he was Professor of Clinical Dementia Research at the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Centre at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He founded and still leads the section of geriatric psychiatry and the Centre for Age-Related Disease at Stavanger University Hospital, Norway. Prof. Aarsland is one of the speakers in Plenary 2, on 24 October.
Bernd Heise, Germany
Bernd Heise joined the European Working Group of People with Dementia (EWGPWD) in 2018. He is married and lives in Munich, Germany with his wife. For 34 years, he had worked as a development engineer of semiconductor devices in the telecommunications industry, until he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in early 2016. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of People Living with Dementia, founded by the German Alzheimer association (Deutsche Alzheimer Gesellschaft e.V. Selbsthilfe Demenz). Mr Heise is one of the speakers in Plenary 3, on 25 October.
Wiesje van der Flier, Netherlands
Professor Wiesje van der Flier is Head of Clinical Research at the Alzheimer Center of the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam (VUmc) , where she has worked since 2004. She studied neuropsychology at the University of Utrecht. In addition, she is a clinical epidemiologist. She is head of the Amsterdam Dementia Cohort, an ongoing memory-clinic based cohort, including over 6,000 patients with deep phenotyping (MRI, EEG, CSF biomarkers, and PET) and linked biobank (blood, DNA, CSF). The Amsterdam Dementia Cohort is at the basis of many of the studies performed at the VUmc Alzheimer center. Prof. van der Flier is one of the speakers in Plenary 1, on 24 October.
