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    Lea Grinberg, M.D., Ph.D.

    Lea Grinberg, M.D., Ph.D.

    Lea T. Grinberg, M.D., Ph.D., is a neuropathologist specializing in neurodegenerative diseases. She currently serves as a senior associate consultant in the departments of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and Neurosciences at the Mayo Clinic. Prior to this role, she spent 16 years at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was a professor of neurology and pathology and held the John Douglas French Foundation Alzheimer’s Disease Endowed Chair. She also held a tenured faculty position at the University of São Paulo. In 2009, she received the L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” Award.

    Grinberg’s research focuses on the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases, selective vulnerability, and pathological heterogeneity. Her notable contributions include identifying brainstem nuclei as the earliest structures affected in Alzheimer’s disease and translating these findings into advances in diagnosis and treatment. She has also investigated the neurobiological basis of sleep dysfunction in neurodegenerative disorders and developed high-resolution histology methods to validate findings from multimodal neuroimaging.

    She currently directs the Human Validation Core of the NIH-funded U54 Center Without Walls for Tau Biology, serves as co-principal investigator of the Neuropathology Core for the U54 LEADS study and is a principal investigator with the Tau Consortium. At the Mayo Clinic, she is leading a major initiative to modernize the department of Neurosciences’ Brain Bank. Grinberg is also a member of the governing boards of the Brazilian Biobank for Aging Studies and the Global Brain Health Institute.