Rudolph Tanzi, Ph.D

Dr. Rudolph Tanzi is the Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, Co-Director of the McCance Center for Brain Health, Co-Director of the MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, and Vice-Chair of Neurology (Research), at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is also the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. 

Dr. Tanzi discovered several Alzheimer’s disease genes, including all three early-onset familial Alzheimer’s genes, and serves as director of the Alzheimer’s Genome Project, which identified the first innate immune AD gene, CD33. He is also developing therapies for treating and preventing AD using human brain organoid models of the disease. More recently, Dr. Tanzi introduced the “anti-microbial protection” hypothesis of AD implicating infection in the disease process. 

Dr. Tanzi has published roughly 600 papers, has received numerous awards including the Metropolitan Life Award, Potamkin Prize, Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award, and was on the 2015 TIME100 Most Influential People in the World list. Dr. Tanzi is a New York Times bestselling author, who has co-authored “Decoding Darkness” and three bestsellers with Deepak Chopra: “Super Brain”, “Super Genes”, and “The Healing Self”. He has hosted his three Public Television shows, appeared on numerous TV news shows, and in his spare time, plays keyboards for Joe Perry, Aerosmith and other musicians.