
Renaud La Joie, PhD
Renaud La Joie, PhD, is the Edward and Pearl Fein Endowed Professor in Precision Care for Memory Disorders at UCSF. He is a neuroscientist and neuroimaging expert whose research focuses on understanding the mechanisms that drive Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. Using advanced brain imaging techniques, fluid biomarkers, and neuropsychological measures, Dr. La Joie seeks to unravel the drivers of clinical heterogeneity in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia. He has established strong collaborations with neuropathologists to help bridge the gap between in vivo and post-mortem measures of brain pathology, guiding a rigorous interpretation of biomarker data to improve diagnostic precision and prognosis for patients with cognitive decline.
Dr. La Joie originally studied medicine in his native Normandy, France, before earning a master’s degree in neuroscience from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. He completed his PhD in neuropsychology under the mentorship of Drs. Gaël Chételat and Béatrice Desgranges, where he studied Alzheimer’s disease using multimodal PET and MRI imaging. After a year as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley with Dr. William Jagust, Dr. La Joie joined UCSF as a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Gil Rabinovici’s lab at the Edward and Pearl Fein Memory and Aging Center in 2016. He transitioned to a faculty position in 2021. In 2022, he became co-lead of the neuroimaging core for UCSF’s NIA-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), and in 2023, he joined the faculty at the Global Brain Health Institute.
Dr. La Joie has received numerous awards, including the 2018 Young Investigator Award at the Human Amyloid Imaging Conference, the 2020 de Leon Prize in Neuroimaging, and the 2024 Christopher Clark Award for his contributions to Alzheimer’s imaging research. He is an elected member of several national and international steering committees and continues to advance precision care for patients through his innovative research. He also received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Mentoring for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Scholars from the UCSF Graduate Division and Office for Postdoctoral Scholars in 2020.
Dr. La Joie has co-authored 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts and was included in Clarivate’s 2024 list of most influential scientists, along with 47 other researchers at UCSF.
