Alzheimer’s, a pandemic in waiting
Speaker, Presenter
Prof. Dr. Naweed Syed
Dr. Naweed Syed is Professor and Scientific Director of the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary. He has been the recipient of many international and national awards including: Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (USA), Parker B. Francis Fellowship (USA), Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Scholar, Senior Scholar and Scientist Awards, Canadian Institute for Health Research (CIHR) Investigator Award and Dr. Syed was awarded the Tamgha-e-Initiaz (Medal of Excellence — the highest civilian award for research and innovation) from the Government of Pakistan. He has also been identified and recognized amongst 150 Canadian Innovations/ Innovators in lieu of Canada’s 150 Birthday in 2017. Dr. Syed is also the recipient of Canada-150 Medal by the Senate of Canada. Dr. Syed has given several hundred lectures as an invited keynote speaker and has received over 95 national and international awards from various organizations. Dr. Syed’s team was the first to develop a bionic hybrid which enabled direct dialogue between the brain cells and the silicon chip. This study was highlighted in Time Magazine and on the Discovery Channel, Global and Mail etc. Dr. Syed has published extensively in peer-reviewed scientific journals including Nature, Science, Neuron and the Journal of Neuroscience. He holds multiple research grants from the Canadian Institute of Health Research and the Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada. In addition to being the first scientist to have connected brain cells with a semi-conductor chip which has applications for brain-control prosthetic devices – to managing depression, epilepsy and other neurological disorders. He was also the first scientist to perform single cell brain cell transplant in living animals. He was also the first scientist to reconstruct respiratory network in cell culture and these two studies were declared as the breakthrough of the decade of the brain.
