Optimizing Brain Health and Preventing Cognitive Decline

Sandra Black, MD, FRCP(C) is an internationally renowned cognitive and stroke neurologist who holds the inaugural Brill Chair in Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of Toronto and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. She was appointed to the Order of Ontario in 2011 and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2012. A leading clinical trialist in dementia, she is the current Executive Director of the Toronto Dementia Research Alliance. She is the Sunnybrook site director and key founder of the Heart & Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery, a multi-site, public-private, non-profit research corporation focused on maximizing stroke recovery, including covert stroke. She is the Brain Sciences Research Program Director at Sunnybrook Research Institute. She has received awards for outstanding mentorship of junior faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. Her 30-year research career has bridged dementia and stroke, exploiting advanced neuroimaging techniques for detection, differential diagnosis, monitoring outcomes and studying brain-behaviour relationships, with a recent focus on interactions of aging, small vessel disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke. She has authored/co-authored 344 peer-reviewed papers and 66 invited publications and serves on a number of international advisory groups on stroke and dementia. She combines enormous dedication to patients with cutting-edge science.