Michael Weiner

Michael Weiner, MD, is a Professor in Residence in Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Medicine, Psychiatry, and Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). He is Principal Investigator of the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), which is the largest observational study in the world concerning Alzheimer’s Disease, which has enrolled over 2000 subjects (including controls, MCI, and AD) at 60 sites across the USA and Canada for cognitive testing, MRI, PET, and lumbar puncture. Dr. Weiner founded and launched The Brain Health Registry, which is a web-based registry for recruiting, screening, and longitudinally monitoring subjects for neuroscience studies of all types. He founded, and for many years, directed the Director of the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND) at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

After graduating from the Johns Hopkins University in 1961, He obtained his M.D, from SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, New York in 1965, and he completed his internship and residency in Medicine from Mt. Sinai Hospital in 1967. From 1967-1968, Dr. Weiner completed a residency and clinical fellowship in Metabolism from Yale-New Haven Medical Center. In 1970, he completed a research fellowship in Nephrology from Yale University School of Medicine and a research fellowship in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin Institute for Enzyme Research in 1972, followed by a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine, Renal Section from the University of Wisconsin Institute in 1972. In 1974 he became an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) at Stanford University, and in 1980 he became an Associate Professor of Medicine (Nephrology) at UCSF. In 1983, he established the Magnetic Resonance Unit at the San Francisco VA Medical Center, which became the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases in 2000. In 1990, he became a Professor of Radiology, Medicine, Psychiatry and Neurology at UCSF.

Dr. Weiner’s research activities involve the development and utilization of MRI and PET for investigating and diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases. In 1980, Dr. Weiner was one of the first to perform MRS on an intact animal, and subsequently pursued his goal to develop MRI/S as a clinical tool. During the past 25 years he has worked to develop and optimized the use of MRI, PET, and blood based biomarker methods to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.

Dr. Weiner is also the founder and Principal Investigator of the Brain Health Registry, a web-based patient registry to facilitate recruitment, assessment and longitudinal monitoring of brain function for neuroscience studies and randomized clinical trials.

Dr. Weiner has over 900 published articles and he has written 70 book chapters. He has won numerous awards including the Young Investigator Award of the American College of Cardiology, the Middleton Award for outstanding research in the VA, the Nancy and Ronald Reagan Award (on behalf of ADNI), and the Potemkin Award from the American Association of Neurology.