The Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC) hosted its annual Alzheimer’s Disease & Related Dementias Research Day on April 15 at the Discovery Building on the UW–Madison campus. Nearly three hundred people attended the event in person and online. Research Day was started in 2014 to encourage collaboration and promote scientific thought among faculty, students and researchers from a wide range of disciplines across the UW–Madison campus.
The program kicked off with a special perspective shared by ADRC research participant William “Bill” Ducett. This was followed by a featured talk by Nastaren Abad, PhD, senior scientist at GE HealthCare’s Technology & Innovation Center (HTIC), titled “Revealing the Brain’s Structural–Dynamic Landscape: MAGNUS MRI for Multiscale Neurobiology.”
Next, attendees watched eight “Lightning Presenters” share their current research in rapid succession.
The afternoon of Research Day began with opening remarks from Nathaniel Chin, MD, who also treated the audience to a reading from his forthcoming book, When Memory Fades: What to Expect at Every Stage, from Early Signs to Full Support for Alzheimer’s and Dementia.
The Research Day poster session included 49 presenters. A group of faculty members judged the posters and awarded three prizes. In-person attendees voted for two additional fan favorite awards during the event.
Research Day 2026 award winners
Best Fellow, Post Doc or Research Scientist Poster: Deling He, “Automated analysis of a remote-collected speech motor task for subtle-to-mild cognitive impairment in Alzheimer's risk-enriched cohort”
Best Graduate Student or Research Specialist Poster: Emma Nicolaysen, “KLOTHO KL-VS heterozygosity attenuates the association between age-related neurodegeneration and subsequent decline in executive function in a cohort of cognitively unimpaired middle-aged and older adults”
Best Undergraduate Student Poster: Leah Staruck, “Alignment of antemortem images to postmortem tissue photographs using standard neuroimaging tools”
Fan Favorite Poster Presentation: Macy Neitzke, “Equol inhibits NLRP3 inflammasome activation in macrophages and microglia”
Fan Favorite Lightning Presentation: Gabriella Mamlouk, "Racial identity moderates the association between depression and AD-relevant plasma biomarkers in a multi-ethnic cohort"
UW faculty presentations
Fred Ketchum, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurology, presented “Contexts of Implementation for Alzheimer’s Disease Blood Biomarkers in Primary Care.”
Jessica Caldwell, PhD, visiting associate professor in the Department of Neurology and the Multiple Principal Investigator (MPI) of the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention (WRAP) study, presented, "Impact of sex and gender on Alzheimer’s disease risk and resilience."
Research Day 2026 concluded with an awards celebration and closing remarks from Barbara Bendlin, PhD.
Learn more
Recordings of the featured and lightning presentations will be available on our YouTube channel soon.
