2026 PROGRAM
The event will be held at the Puerto Rico Convention Center in San Juan and published here after the 9th of December.
2026 GUEST LECTURES
JOYITA DUTTA, PhD – UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Dr. Joyita Dutta is a Professor with tenure in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her BTech (Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and MS and PhD from the University of Southern California. She directs the Biomedical Imaging and Data Science Laboratory (BIDSLab) at UMass Amherst, which develops signal processing and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques for image, graph, and time-series datasets. Her scientific contributions include the development of a broad range of tools for medical image enhancement and reconstruction with a focus on multimodality information integration. Her current research interests include developing AI approaches for the diagnosis and prognosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Dutta was the recipient of the 2016 SNMMI Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award and the 2016 IEEE Bruce Hasegawa Young Investigator Medical Imaging Science Award. Dr. Dutta has served as a member of the SNMMI AI Task Force and the Program Chair for the 2022 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference in Milan, Italy. She is the Immediate Past President of the SNMMI Physics, Instrumentation and Data Sciences Council.
Dr. Dutta will present: “The role of AI in neuroimaging for Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis, staging, and prognosis.”
NICHOLAS SEYFRIED, DPHIL – EMORY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Nick Seyfried is a Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Neurology at Emory University and Associate Director of the Emory Center for Neurodegenerative Disease. He has over 20 years of research experience and more than 230 publications in the field of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias.
At Emory, Dr. Seyfried leads a team that applies proteomics and other multi-omic approaches to both fundamental and translational research. He
currently serves as MPI of NIH-funded research consortia, including the Parkinson’s Disease Biomarker Program (PDBP), which focuses on identifying novel protein biomarkers for Lewy body dementia, and the newly funded Vascular Contributions to Cognitive Impairment and Dementia (VCID) Center Without Walls, which aims to discover therapeutic targets and biomarkers for cerebral amyloid angiopathy.
He serves as Director of the Biomarker Core for the NIH-funded Emory Goizueta Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), where he leads efforts to develop and validate new protein biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma.
As part of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership for Alzheimer’s Disease (AMP-AD), his team developed a high-throughput proteomic pipeline to analyze thousands of human postmortem brain tissues and biofluids. This work has enabled the classification of brain proteomes into biologically meaningful modules associated with specific brain cell types and clinicopathological phenotypes, with the goal of uncovering early mechanisms and biomarkers for AD.
Dr. Seyfried will present: “Integrated Proteomics for Target and Biomarker Discovery in Alzheimer’s Disease”.
DIETMAR THAL, MD, PhD – KU LEUVEN
Dr.Dietmar R. Thal, MD, PhD is Professor for Neuropathology at KU-Leuven (Leuven, Belgium). He is head of the Laboratory of Neuropathology.
Dr. Thal’s research focuses on the neuropathology of amyloid β -protein deposition, tau and TDP-43 pathology in Alzheimer’s disease and amyotrohic lateral sclerosis. He described phases of Aβ -plaque deposition in the human brain yet integrated into the recommended criteria for the neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease by the NIA-AA, types of cerebral amyloid angiopathy related to the APOE genotype, the pattern of necroptosis and pyroptosis activation in the Alzheimer’s disease brain, and a primary retinal tauopathy.
Dr. Thal’s projects are currently funded by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen, Stichting Alzheimer Onderzoek (SAO/FRA, Belgium), KU-Leuven internal funding, Alzheimer’s Association (USA), and the Target ALS Foundation (USA).
Dr Thal will present: “The neuropathological basis of current AD biomarkers: Sensitivity and pathogenetic implications”