Joseph C. Masdeu

Joseph C. Masdeu, MD, PhD holds the Graham Family Distinguished Endowed Chair in Neurological Sciences at the Houston Methodist Institute of Academic Medicine and leads the Nantz National Alzheimer Center and Neuroimaging at the Houston Methodist eurological and Research Institutes. He is Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Dr. Masdeu is interested in the application of neuroimaging tools, including new molecular neuroimaging markers, to the study of neurodegenerative brain disorders. By clarifying disease mechanisms and providing quantifiable markers of disease progression, this research will lead to the production of new medications and greatly facilitate the testing of new therapies in smaller and better characterized patient samples.

A native of Spain, where he became certified in Psychiatry after his MD degree at the University of Madrid, Dr. Masdeu is a US citizen who completed residency training in Chicago and was certified in Neurology by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry in 1976. He was a fellow in Neuropathology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard Medical School in 1976-77. In the 1980s, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in New York, he directed the Alzheimer research component of a Program Project on Aging and Dementia. From 1991-2000 he was the Chairman of Neurology at the New York Medical College. He was Professor of Neurology and Director of Neurosciences at the University of Navarra Medical School, in Pamplona, Spain, from 2000-2008 and a Senior Staff Physician and Scientist at the Section of Integrative Neuroimaging of the Clinical Brain Disorders Branch of the Intramural Research Program of the National Institutes of Health (NIMH) from 2008-2014. He is the author of 142 peer-reviewed papers, 61 book chapters, and of seven books, including “Localization in Clinical Neurology,” now in its 6th edition. With a longstanding interest in neuroimaging, he is chairman of the Neuroimaging Research Group of the World Federation of Neurology. He has been a director of the American Academy of Neurology and president of the American Society of Neuroimaging. Since 2007 he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuroimaging.