Nilufer Ertekin-Taner, MD, PhD

Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner is a neurogeneticist and board-certified behavioral neurologist at the Departments of Neuroscience and Neurology at Mayo Clinic Florida. After obtaining her medical degree at Hacettepe University Medical School, in Turkey, she received her Ph.D. from Mayo Graduate School, followed by residency in Neurology at Mayo Clinic Minnesota and fellowship in Behavioral Neurology at Mayo Clinic Florida. Since establishing her research program in 2008, her studies have focused on the genetics of Alzheimer’s disease. Her laboratory utilizes biological traits such as gene expression levels and cognitive endophenotypes to discover and characterize genetic factors underlying the complex genetics of Alzheimer disease. Dr. Ertekin-Taner is the PI of several projects aimed at characterization of brain gene expression in Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases and has led one of the largest human brain transcriptome studies. In addition to her BrightFocus award, Dr. Ertekin-Taner’s laboratory is supported by the National Institutes of Health and CurePSP Society.