Steven T. DeKosky, MD

Dr. Steven DeKosky is the Aerts-Cosper Professor of Alzheimer’s Research at the University of Florida College of Medicine, and is Interim Executive Director of the McKnight Brain Institute, positions to which he was appointed in July 2015. He also serves as Associate Director of the National Institute of Aging- funded Florida Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at UF. His academic appointment is as Professor of Neurology in the UF College of Medicine.

His basic research centers on structural and neurochemical changes in human brain in aging and dementia and effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI). His clinical and translational research have centered on understanding the genetics, neuropsychiatric symptoms, neuroimaging, and treatment and prevention of AD. Beginning trauma studies as a Principal Investigator in the University of Pittsburgh Brain Trauma Research Center in 1992, he studied similarities in the injury cascades of TBI and AD. He was an author of the first reports of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) in American professional football players. He was also a Principal Investigator in the clinical application of the breakthrough amyloid-imaging agent Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB). He directed an 8 year NIH-funded national multicenter trial to assess whether Ginkgo biloba can prevent or delay onset of dementia in normal elderly adults, the first large study of prevention of dementia/AD.

Dr. DeKosky has served on and led numerous NIH review and advisory committees, and taught and mentored in clinical research training programs sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). He was a member of the FDA Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee from 2004-2007. In 2010 he was appointed to the National Advisory Council of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health) of the NIH. Following that term, he was appointed to and currently serves on the NIH’s Council of Councils in 2013; the Council of Councils oversees the Common Fund of the NIH.