Contact

January 1, 2013 - 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge

The 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge, launched by the Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative, asked researchers to articulate the best hypothesis and research plan to discover the reasons for sex-based differences in AD progression. This rigorous scientific challenge, vetted by the NIA, with $100,000 in awards, exceeded expectations in terms of both scientific interest and global outreach, with more than 800 open project rooms from 65 countries.

  • The two-tier judging process commenced September 6th and was conducted over an eight-week period. The four winners/finalists of Round One, announced on October 31, 2013, shared in $50,000 in awards from GBFAI.
  • Online voting for the Round Two $50,000 21CBT Innovation Award winner ran November 1–5, 2013. The results of the online/live voting attracted 6,500 votes from 36 countries.
    • A live vote took place November 7, 2013 before 500+ of the world’s best-and-brightest Alzheimer’s minds at the Alzheimer’s Disease Summit: The Path to 2025, presented in New York City by The New York Academy of Sciences, National Institute on Aging/NIH, and the Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease.

This challenge built on the momentum of our first and second challenges: i) the first, completed in Q2 2012, in partnership with The Alzheimer’s Immunotherapy Program (AIP) of Janssen Alzheimer Immunotherapy, and Pfizer Inc; and ii) the second, relating to the causes of sex-based differences in AD presentation. We do believe that our direct engagement with FNIH as a challenge partner, and the NIA in a technical advisory, on this “first of its kind” challenge in the AD space helped influence the recent 2016 announcement below from the NIH.

IMPACT: NIH Grant to Fund Research on Alzheimer’s in Women

Update: A new Alzheimer’s disease research project has just been funded, as a team of researchers from the University of Arizona Health Sciences Center for Innovation in Brain Science recently received a $10.3 million grant from the US government. According to a report from AZ Big Media, the five-year Program Project Grant from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health will fund a study to be led by University of Arizona neuroscientist, Dr. Roberta Diaz Brinton, in hopes of discovering why women are more prone to Alzheimer’s disease than men are.