Back to News
Fellows

Announcing our 2023 Gates Sr. AD Fellows

Congratulations to our seven Fellows who are the inaugural cohort of the William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative.

Congratulations to the 2023 Inaugural Cohort!

The William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative is named after a man who left an incredible legacy in law, philanthropy, and activism. It was established to support a new generation of researchers who have novel approaches to end Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD).

Today, the AD Data Initiative is proud to announce the selection of seven Fellows into our inaugural cohort. Our 2023 Gates Sr. AD Fellows are,

  • Geetha Chilla, Ph.D., A*STAR’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII) (Singapore)
  • Ricardo D’Oliveira Albanus, Ph.D., Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (United States)
  • Sam Danso, Ph.D., University of Sunderland (United Kingdom)
  • Jiyang Jiang, Ph.D., Centre for Healthy Brain Ageing, University of New South Wales (Australia)
  • Hangfan Liu, Ph.D., Center for Advanced Imaging Research, University of Maryland (United States)
  • Jermaine Ross, Ph.D., Alleo Labs (United States)
  • Natalia Vilor-Tejedor, Ph.D., Barcelona Beta Brain Research Center (Spain)

The Fellows were selected on the strength of their research proposals, professional background, and passion for accelerating ADRD discoveries. This diverse cohort of accomplished researchers have a broad array of research interests such as artificial intelligence/machine learning, biostatistical modeling, functional genomics, and neuroepidemiology.

Learn More about the 2023 Gates Sr. AD Fellows.

Over the next two years, the AD Data Initiative looks forward to supporting these Fellows as they embark on their research projects and share their findings with researchers around the world. They will be at the forefront of building a community and increasing collaborations in ADRD research. Keep an eye on AD Connect to hear more from our Fellows.

Thank you to everyone who helped us spread the word about our new Fellowship program, took the time to apply, and supported our work! We cannot advance our mission without the efforts of our community.

If you are inspired by our Fellows and have a novel approach to ADRD research, please consider applying next year. Details about our 2024 Fellowship program will be available early next year. Sign up for our announcements and follow us on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) for updates.

About the Fellowship

The William H. Gates Sr. Fellowship from the AD Data Initiative encourages and supports researchers from around the world to be bold, creative, and innovative in their approach to ADRD research. This may include generating new hypotheses about the biology of dementia or challenging existing ones; and using novel data analysis ideas or statistical approaches on human or human-derived anonymized data to make new discoveries in ADRD.

Named after William H. Gates Sr., this Fellowship honors his legacy of advocacy and philanthropy. We are inspired by the actions of Mr. Gates Sr., who passed away from Alzheimer’s disease in 2020, and we hope he can be an inspiration to the global research community. This year’s inaugural cohort and subsequent ones will be at the forefront of building a community and increasing collaborations as we move further and faster to end ADRD.

The Fellowship is a two-year program that provides researchers a $100,000 USD financial award, mentoring and network opportunities, and other supports such as publication assistance and conference attendance. We hope each year’s cohort will bring a broad range of ideas and backgrounds to the program.

About the AD Data Initiative

The AD Data Initiative is a coalition of leading academic, advocacy, government, industry, and philanthropy organizations that recognizes the need for dementia researchers to find easier ways to share unpublished data, analytical tools, and scientific findings. These partners are working together to accelerate progress towards new diagnostics, treatments, and cures in ADRD. In late 2020, the AD Data Initiative publicly launched ADDI, a non-profit organization, to help achieve its goals.