Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, MD, PhD

Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, MD, PhD is a Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Mayo Clinic Florida and contact PI of the CLEAR-AD U19 Program. She is a physician-scientist with seminal contributions to the field of Alzheimer’s disease and related neurodegenerative conditions. Her innovative, groundbreaking work combining complex genomics and deep endophenotypes is essential for the discovery of molecular disease mechanisms, new treatments and biomarkers for these devastating and currently incurable conditions.

She has pioneered the endophenotype approach in genetic studies of Alzheimer’s Disease and related disorders (ADRD). Her laboratory applies leading-edge analytic approaches to integrate biological traits with multi-omics data to discover precision medicine therapies and biomarkers in ADRD. Dr. Ertekin-Taner is a PI of AMP-AD and Resilience-AD and was a PI of M²OVE-AD consortia and Florida Consortium for African American AD Studies (FCA³DS).

Dr. Ertekin-Taner has been continually funded by the National Institutes of Health and foundations, having served or serving as a Principal Investigator (PI) on 37 grants with total extramural grant support of about $80 million since 2008. Her lab is a leader in many national large-scale initiatives aiming to discover precision medicine therapies and biomarkers in Alzheimer’s and related disorders. Owing to her prolific, impactful work, Dr. Ertekin-Taner serves on numerous executive committees, advisory boards and is a frequently invited-speaker. Ertekin-Taner is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2022 Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Fellows Award. A board-certified neurologist, she continues to care for dementia patients. Dr. Ertekin-Taner is also a leader in education serving as Director and PI for Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCaTS) KL2 Mentored Career Development Program, as Founding Chair of the Mayo Clinic Research Pipeline K2R Program and as a mentor to over 80 trainees to date from various career stages.