Lea Grinberg, MD, PhD
Dr. Lea Tenenholz Grinberg is a neuropathologist specializing in brain aging and associated disorders, most notably, Alzheimer’s disease and the neurological basis of sleep disturbances in neurodegenerative diseases. Currently, she is a John Douglas French Alzheimer’s Foundation Endowed Professor at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center, part of the Executive Board of the Global Brain Health Institute and a member of the Medical Scientific Advisory Group for the Alzheimer’s Association. She is also a Professor of Pathology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil.
In 2003, Dr. Grinberg was among the founders of a brain bank in São Paulo that is focused on brain aging. This brain bank, which she had since developed into an extremely prolific and highly-regarded institution, helped Dr. Grinberg prove that, contrary to what has been accepted previously, the brainstem and not the cortex, harbors the first detectable neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. In 2009, she was the recipient of the UNESCO-L’Oréal Award “For Women in Science,” and in 2010, she received the John Douglas French Alzheimer Foundation “Distinguished Research Scholar Award.” Currently, Dr. Grinberg is the Co-Leader of the UCSF Neurodegenerative Disease Brain Bank, where she conducts the neuropathological diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases. She also directs the Human Biology Validation Core for the NIH/U54 Tau Centers Without Walls, is a principal investigator from the Tau Consortium and co-leads the Neuropathology Core for the LEADS project.