Dr Dale Bredesen is internationally recognised as an expert in the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. He graduated from Caltech, then earned his MD from Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He served as chief resident in neurology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) before joining Nobel laureate Stanley Prusiner's laboratory at UCSF as an NIH postdoctoral fellow. He held faculty positions at UCSF, UCLA and the University of California, San Diego. Dr Bredesen directed the Program on Aging at the Burnham Institute before joining the Buck Institute in 1998 as its founding president and CEO. He is Professor of Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles.