Michal Schnaider Beeri Appointed Jacqueline Krieger Klein Endowed Director’s Chair In Neurodegeneration Research

The Board of Governors named Michal Schnaider Beeri, a global leader in Alzheimer’s disease clinical research and director of the Herbert and Jacqueline Krieger Klein Alzheimer’s and Dementia Clinical Research and Treatment Center, as its Endowed Chair in Neurodegenerative Research.

Beeri, who came to Rutgers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine where she was a professor in psychiatry, specializing in geriatric psychology, cognitive impairment and diabetes as a risk factor for neurodegeneration. The recipient of numerous awards from the National Institutes of Health, Beeri has published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals and serves on major health and medical editorial boards. She is credited for helping to establish The Joseph Sagol Neuroscience Center at Sheba Medical Center in Israel, which is acclaimed for Alzheimer’s and dementia research. Through her trailblazing research, Beeri has been praised for trying to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in the general population.

A professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School Department of Neurology and a Core Member of the Brain Health Institute, Beeri has spent much of her career mentoring and training both students and post-doctoral scientists.  To better understand the causes of Alzheimer’s and dementia and help develop novel therapeutics for its treatment, Beeri is creating cohorts for clinical trials on Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. The knowledge gained from work done at the new center, which opened this fall, will offer hope for both patients and families whose lives have been unequivocally altered by the devastating effects of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

The Alzheimer’s and dementia center at Rutgers and the research being overseen by Beeri is supported by a $5 million donation from Herbert C. Klein, a Rutgers alumnus and former U.S. congressman who made the gift in memory of his wife, Jacqueline Krieger Klein who died in 2017 after battling Alzheimer’s disease. An estimated 6.5 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s disease, affecting about 190,000 people over the age of 65 in New Jersey alone, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.