Richard Mayeux Receives Award For Lifetime Achievement From New York Academy Of Medicine
NEW YORK – Richard Mayeux, M.D., M.S., director of the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center and co-director of the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center, has been selected as the recipient of this year’s John Stearns Award for Lifetime Achievement in Medicine by the New York Academy of Medicine.
Dr. Mayeux will receive the award, intended to honor extraordinary achievement in multiple areas over a professional lifetime, at the annual meeting of the Fellows of the Academy to be held on November 18 in New York. Notable past recipients of the award include: Lewis Thomas, Joshua Lederberg, David E. Rogers, Paul A. Marks and Torsten N. Wiesel.
He is the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Professor of Neurology, Psychiatry and Epidemiology and the director of Columbia’s Sergievsky Center, a center devoted to the epidemiologic investigation of neurological diseases. He is also director of the Memory Disorders Center at New York State Psychiatric Institute.
World-renowned for his research showing that Alzheimer’s disease likely results from a complex mixture of altered genes and exposure to environmental factors, Dr. Mayeux is director of an ongoing epidemiological investigation of Alzheimer’s disease and related conditions, known as the Washington Heights-Inwood Community Aging Project, currently in its 19th year.
“Receiving this award and joining such an esteemed group of past recipients is a great honor for me,” said Dr. Mayeux. “It is my hope that understanding how altered genes interact with environmental factors will one day help us to design more targeted treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and bring us closer to preventing the disease altogether or delaying onset.”
Dr. Mayeux is currently leading a population-based study of the rates and risk factors for Alzheimer's disease among elderly from African-American and Caribbean Hispanic communities. In addition, he and his research team are leading a genetic study of Alzheimer's disease in Caribbean Hispanic families, which led to the identification of genetic variants in the sortilin-related receptor, SORL1, related to Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Mayeux also leads the National Institute on Aging Late-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease Family study.
In addition, Dr. Mayeux has authored more than 300 papers, chapters and books dealing with various aspects of Alzheimer’s disease and other degenerative diseases of the aging brain.
In 2000, Dr. Mayeux was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and in 2007, was the recipient of the Potamkin Award for research on Alzheimer's disease and related disorders from the American Academy of Neurology. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the New York Academy of Science and a member of the American Neurological Association and the Association of American Physicians. Dr. Mayeux is a member of the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease, Society for Epidemiologic Research and Society for Neuroscience. He has also served as a member of the Aging Review and the Epidemiology of Chronic Disorders Committees for the National Institutes of Health and the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board for the Alzheimer’s Association.
Dr. Mayeux co-directs the Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain with Michael Shelanski, M.D., Ph.D.
The Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain at Columbia University Medical Center is a multidisciplinary group that has forged links between researchers and clinicians to uncover the causes of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other age-related brain diseases and discover ways to prevent and cure these diseases. It has partnered with the Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center, which was established by an endowment in 1977, to focus on diseases of the nervous system. The Center integrates traditional epidemiology with genetic analysis and clinical investigation to explore all phases of diseases of the nervous system. For more information about these centers visit: http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/taub/ and http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/dept/sergievsky/
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The medical center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and state and one of the largest in the United States. For more information, visit www.cumc.columbia.edu.
The New York Academy of Medicine (NYAM) has been advancing the health of people in cities since 1847. An independent organization, NYAM addresses the health challenges facing the world’s urban populations through interdisciplinary approaches to policy leadership, education, community engagement and innovative research. Drawing on the expertise of diverse partners worldwide and more than 2,000 elected Fellows from across the professions, current priorities are to create environments in cities that support healthy aging; to strengthen systems that prevent disease and promote the public’s health; and to implement interventions that eliminate health disparities. For more information, visit www.nyam.org.
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