Disrupting Dementia: A Global Approach to Improving Brain Health

Over 55 million individuals across the globe are living with dementia, and most causes of dementia have no cure. How do we harness the clinical, cultural, and scientific knowledge of brain health experts to improve outcomes for patients worldwide? Fellows from the Global Brain Health Institute, representing fields in art, medicine, and community advocacy, will present their research and be in conversation with Memory and Aging Professor in Residence Dr. Katherine P. Rankin. 

About the Speakers

Paul N. Animbom holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Sciences from Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, specializing in health communication. He also completed a Joint European Master's in Performing Arts from the Universities of Paris 8 and Brussels. He is a Professor of Mental Health, Therapeutic, Digital and Audiovisual Communication, Media, and Theatre Studies and Chair of the Department of Performing and Visual Arts at The University of Bamenda, Cameroon. He is a mental health advocate, arts in health promoter and practitioner, and author of more than 40 scientific publications in national and international peer-reviewed journals and handbooks. He is the Founder and President of the Centre for Research and Practice of Art-related Therapy, Cameroon.

Greg Mohl, PhD, is a neuroscientist and postdoctoral fellow at UCSF’s Memory and Aging Center, jointly appointed in the Kampmann and Clelland Labs. His research focuses on understanding how tau protein mutations contribute to neurodegenerative diseases and developing nanoparticle-based methods to deliver gene-editing therapies to the brain. Greg earned his PhD in the Tetrad Program at UCSF, where he studied the effects of the V337M tau mutation in neurons, and his BS in Microbiology from Brigham Young University, where he developed novel influenza inhibitors.

Agbor Epse Ebot completed her medical training at the Faculty of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences of the University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon. She now serves at the Neurology Unit of the Yaoundé Central Hospital and at the Brain Research Africa Initiative (BRAIN), where she contributes to research projects and community services aimed at advancing brain health in Cameroon, across Africa—particularly in French-speaking regions—and globally.

About the Moderator

Dr. Kate Rankin is a Professor in Residence in the Memory and Aging division of the UCSF Department of Neurology. She trained at Yale, Fuller, and UCSF, earning a PhD in Clinical Psychology with a specialization in Neuropsychology. At the MAC she uses quantitative neuroimaging to investigate the underpinnings of human socioemotional behaviors such as empathy, self-awareness, social cue detection, and theory of mind, in healthy aging adults and patients with neurodegenerative disease. She also designs and builds informatics tools for harmonizing cross-disciplinary data and analytic processes to facilitate scientific collaboration, accelerate discovery, and improve clinical care.