Yakeel Quiroz

Dr. Quiroz is Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. She currently serves as Director of the MGH Familial Dementia Neuroimaging Lab, and Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention Program (MAPP). She completed her PhD in Clinical Psychology at Boston University and her Clinical Internship and Postdoctoral Fellowship in Neuropsychology at the MGH. Dr. Quiroz’s research interests focus on studying the neural underpinnings of memory dysfunction in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By applying her efforts to the world’s largest family with a single, early onset AD-causing mutation (E280A in PSEN1), her research has provided evidence of brain abnormalities in individuals at genetic risk for AD decades before their clinical onset. Her findings have helped the field to re-conceptualize Alzheimer’s as a sequence of changes that begins decades before cognitive decline, and which may be targeted by promising disease-slowing treatments at a time in which they might have their most profound effect. Her research work has resulted in several publications that have generated considerable discussion in the field, and has achieved recognition by colleagues at the regional, national, and international level. Dr. Quiroz is the recipient of several awards, including the NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, the FABBS Foundation Early Career Impact Award, the National Academy of Neuropsychology Tony Wong Diversity Award, and the Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences Prize from the Alejandro Angel Escobar Foundation in Colombia.

Dr. Quiroz also serves as Director of the MGH Multicultural Assessment and Research Center (MARC), and the MGH postdoctoral training program in Multicultural Neuropsychology.