NIH Toolbox® Scientific Review Board
Scientific experts across the fields of Cognition, Motor, Sensation, and Emotion were selected to help shape the direction of the NIH Toolbox to ensure that it remains relevant for years to come.
Lisa L. Barnes, PhD
is the Alla V. and Solomon Jesmer Professor of Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine within the Rush Alzheimer’s Disease Center at Rush University Medical Center. Trained as a cognitive neuropsychologist, she received her PhD from the University of Michigan in biopsychology and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroscience at the University of California, Davis. Dr. Barnes has received numerous NIH grants and has published over 200 manuscripts. Her research interests include disparities in chronic diseases of aging, cognitive decline, and risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. She is the Principal Investigator of two longitudinal community-based studies of older African Americans, including the Minority Aging Research Study (MARS), which has been funded by NIA since 2004. She advocates for recruitment of under-represented groups into clinical studies and has received numerous awards and fellowships.
Faculty Webpage
Patricia J. Bauer, PhD
received her Ph.D. from Miami University and was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego. She was a faculty member at the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota from 1989 to 2005. After two years in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, she joined the faculty of Emory University in 2007 where she is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Psychology. Her research focuses on the development of memory from infancy through college years, with a special emphasis in the accumulation of semantic, or real world, knowledge and how it is used. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Psychological Science starting January 2020.
Faculty Webpage
Veronica Bordes Edgar, PhD, ABPP
is an Associate Professor with joint faculty appointments in Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She earned her doctorate from Arizona State University in 2008 after completing her pre-doctoral internship at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bordes Edgar went on to complete her post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota Medical School in 2010. She became board certified in Clinical Neuropsychology in 2014 and subspecialty certified in Pediatric Neuropsychology in 2019. Dr. Bordes Edgar serves as a bilingual Pediatric Neuropsychologist at Children’s Medical Center in Dallas and is Co-Director for the Division of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. Her areas of interest include cultural and bilingual issues in assessment, genetic and neurodevelopmental disorders, and interdisciplinary teaching of medical and psychology trainees. For her service to the profession, she was awarded the 2018 Early Career Psychologist Service Award from the American Board of Professional Psychology. Dr. Bordes Edgar is currently President of the Hispanic Neuropsychological Association and on the Board of Directors for the American Board of Clinical Neuropsychology.
Faculty Webpage
Richard C. Gershon, PhD
is the Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Medical Social
Sciences Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University. In response to the realization that the outcomes tools he was using in clinical practice were outdated and failed to cover the needs of his patients, Dr. Gershon’s career has increasingly focused on the development of modern assessment tools. Dr. Gershon serves as PI for the NIH Toolbox for Assessment of Neurological and Behavioral Function, where he coordinated an international team of researchers to create a battery of instruments for clinical investigators to assess areas within cognitive, motor, sensory, and emotional health. He also serves as MPI for the NIA sponsored grant Advancing Reliable Measurement in Alzheimer’s Disease and cognitive Aging (ARMADA), which validates the NIH Toolbox amongst Alzheimer’s populations and older age groups. He is the MPI for the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) PRO Measurement Core. Additionally, he serves as PI on the recently awarded NIH Infant and Toddler Toolbox for infants and children aged 1-42 months. Dr. Gershon’s background is further augmented by his role as a co-investigator
and/or consultant on over 100 assessment development projects in health care, education, and
certification.
Faculty Webpage
Bruno Giordani, PhD
is a tenured Professor in the departments of Psychiatry, Neurology, and
Psychology and the School of Nursing at the University of Michigan. He is the past Director of the Neuropsychology Section in the Department of Psychiatry and is now the Chief Psychologist. He also is the Senior Director of the Mary A. Rackham Institute in the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate School and the Associate Director of the NIH/NIA-funded Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (Michigan ADRC). His research includes neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and imaging approaches in assessment of cognitive change, emphasizing cross-cultural and low-resource settings and nonpharmacological interventions, such as computer-based cognitive training. He has collaborated in research in a number of areas, including Africa, India, Eastern Europe, Thailand, the Caribbean, and China. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association Division 12, Society of Clinical Psychology, and Division 40, Neuropsychology.
Faculty Webpage
Jack M. Guralnik, MD, PhD, MPH
is currently Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the
University of Maryland School of Medicine. He spent 25 years doing research at the National Institute on Aging and was Chief of the intramural Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography and Biometry. He received his M.D. degree from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and M.P.H. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He is Board Certified in Public Health and General Preventive Medicine. Dr. Guralnik has received multiple professional awards during his career. In 2005 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Tampere, Finland and in 2009 received the NIH Director’s Mentoring Award. His primary areas of interest in the epidemiology of aging include the study of physical functioning and disability, the benefits of physical activity, the prevalence and impact of multiple co-existing chronic conditions, factors associated with healthy aging, methods of assessment of health and functional status, and trends in demographic and health status characteristics of the older population. He has published over 800 journal articles and book chapters in these areas of aging research and has taught and lectured extensively in the U.S. and abroad.
Faculty Webpage
Hugh C. Hendrie, MB, ChB, DSc
was Albert Eugene Sterne Professor and Chairman of Psychiatry
from 1975 to 2000 and was co-director of the first funded Alzheimer Disease Center at Indiana University. He embarked on a series of international comparative studies of dementia and its risk factors in the 1980’s with Dr. Hall and others beginning with a study of dementia in Native Americans in Canada and culminating in the NIA funded Indianapolis-Ibadan dementia project in which he was the initial PI. This study was one of the first to identify the link between cardiovascular risk factors and dementia as well as demonstrating differences in incidence rates and genetic risk factors between the populations. He chaired the NIH critical evaluation committee on Cognitive and Emotional Health and was a member of the steering committee for the Healthy Brain Initiative sponsored by CDC. He was a member of the National Advisory Council on Aging from 2009 to 2013.
He has been the recipient of many awards during his career. In July 2017 he was awarded the
Henry Wisniewski Lifetime Achievement award for Alzheimer Disease Research from the Alzheimer Association. He is currently Albert E. Sterne Professor Emeritus Department of Psychiatry Indiana University School of Medicine.
Faculty Webpage
Julie N. Hook, PhD, MBA, ABPP
is a Research Associate Professor and the NIH Toolbox® Product
Manager in the Department of Medical Social Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. She is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist. Dr. Hook began her career as a clinician, researcher, and educator at Rush University Medical Center (Chicago, IL). She then worked in the commercial sector for 10 years. At Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR; Tampa, FL), she worked in R&D as a Product Director leading the development of large-scale psychological tests, and later as the Manager of Testing and Quality Assurance. While at Design Interactive (Orlando, FL), she led DoD funded projects focused on combing technology to improve healthcare assessment. In her current role, she contributes to NIH grant-funded research, and oversees the NIH Toolbox product portfolio including translations, training, and derivate products.
Faculty Webpage
Frank R. Lin, MD, PhD
is Professor and Director of the Cochlear Center for Hearing and Public
Health at Johns Hopkins University. As an otologic surgeon and epidemiologist, he has translated his experiences caring for older adults with hearing loss into foundational public health research and policy. His research established the association of hearing loss with dementia, and he now leads two NIH-funded randomized trials that are establishing the efficacy of hearing interventions. In parallel, Dr. Lin has collaborated with the National Academies, White House, and Congress to develop policies to ensure hearing loss can be effectively and sustainably addressed in society.
Faculty Webpage