A Message from Robert Vassar, PhD, Director of the Mesulam Center
February 3, 2023
Dear Mesulam Center Community,
To those of you that I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting, I want to start by introducing myself. My name is Robert Vassar. I am honored to serve as the new director of the Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer’s Disease and carry on the legacy that Marsel Mesulam, MD, built during his 28 years of leadership.
While I am new to this role, I am not new to Northwestern University or the Mesulam Center, as I have been with the University since 2001. I look forward to continuing our work on achieving the next clinical and basic science summits, wherever the science takes us. The Center has many talented investigators and I look forward to working with each of these wonderful people.
The Mesulam Center’s research is near to my heart. My mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 1983, which spurred me to pursue graduate training to investigate the causes of this devastating neurodegenerative disorder. After completing my doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1992 and postdoctoral fellowship in molecular neuroscience at Columbia University in 1996, I joined the biotechnology company Amgen to start an Alzheimer’s program. There, I co-discovered an enzyme called BACE that is responsible for making amyloid plaques, one of the hallmark pathologies of the Alzheimer’s brain. I came back to academia at Northwestern in 2001 to further investigate the role of BACE and other molecular factors that may cause Alzheimer’s.
I have devoted my career to finding a treatment for this dreaded disease. I am deeply committed to advancing the clinical and basic science in the field of progressive dementias and have been honored to work with so many experts in the field during my career, including Dr. Mesulam and all the outstanding researchers that I’ve worked with at the Mesulam Center.
The success and scientific advances of the Mesulam Center would not be possible without every member of our community and I look forward to working with all of you to continue building on the work that Dr. Mesulam established 28 years ago.
If you would like to learn more about me and my vision for the center, I invite you to read my Q&A profile that was recently published. Thank you for your continued support of the Mesulam Center.
Warm regards,
Robert Vassar, PhD
Director, Mesulam Center for Cognitive Neurology and Alzheimer's Disease
Director, Northwestern Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center
Davee Professor of Alzheimer Research
Professor of Neurology and of Cell and Developmental Biology
Scientific Director of Behavioral Neurology in the Department of Neurology