Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, M.D., Ph.D., is enterprise chair of the Department of Neuroscience and a professor of neurology and neuroscience at Mayo Clinic in Florida. She is a physician-scientist with seminal contributions to the field of Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative conditions. Her innovative, groundbreaking work combining complex genomics and deep endophenotypes is essential for the discovery of molecular disease mechanisms, new treatments and biomarkers for these devastating and currently incurable conditions

Dr. Ertekin-Taner has pioneered the endophenotype approach in genetic studies of Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders (ADRD). Her laboratory applies leadingedge analytic approaches to integrate biological traits with multi-omics data to discover precision medicine therapies and biomarkers in ADRD. Dr. Ertekin-Taner is a principal investigator of AMP-AD and Resilience-AD and was a principal investigator of M2 OVE-AD consortia and Florida Consortium for African American AD Studies. She is the contact principal investigator of the CLEAR-AD U19 Program comprising 13 sites and nearly 100 investigators focused on precision medicine biomarker and therapeutic discoveries.

Dr. Ertekin-Taner has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health and foundations, having served or serving as a principal investigator on 37 grants with total extramural grant support of about $80 million since 2008. Her lab is a leader in many national large-scale initiatives aiming to discover precision medicine therapies and biomarkers in Alzheimer’s and related disorders. Owing to her prolific, impactful work, Dr. Ertekin-Taner serves/served on numerous executive committees and advisory boards, including for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. Dr. ErtekinTaner is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Fellows Award.

A board-certified neurologist, Dr. Ertekin-Taner continues to care for dementia patients. She is also a leader in education serving as director and principal investigator for Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS) KL2 Mentored Career Development Program, as founding chair of the Mayo Clinic Research Pipeline K2R Program, and as a mentor to over 80 trainees to date from various career stages.