In this opportunity, we talked with Dr. Ibañez about the need to promote research and health initiatives in Latin America. He introduced the Multi-Partner Consortium to Expand Dementia Research in Latin America (ReDLat), a networking initiative designed to tackle regional disparities.
See his biography below.
Agustin Ibañez is an Argentinean neuroscientist interested in global approaches to dementia and social, cognitive, and affective neuroscience. He is Director of the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat) at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI, Chile), Full Professor and researcher at the Center for Social and Cognitive Neuroscience, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI, Chile), Associate Research Professor, Trinity College Dublin, TCD, and Group Leader of Predictive Brain Health Modelling Group, Trinity College Dublin. Also, he is a Senior Atlantic Fellow at GBHI-UCSF and visiting professor at GBHI-TCD. Member of the Scientific Researcher Career CONICET, Argentina. Dr. Ibañez holds a track record with +300 publications (+160 in the last five years), including top-ten journals (e.g., Lancet Neurology, World Psychiatry, Nature Reviews Neurology, Nature Human Behavior, Nature Communication, JAMA Neurology, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Molecular Psychiatry, Neuron, Brain). In the last five years, he has received multiple research funding from different international stakeholders, including the Alzheimer’s Association, the Rainwater Charitable Foundation (Tau Consortium), Takeda, NIH/NIA, GBHI (USA); the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); ANID (Chile); COLCIENCIAS (Colombia); DAAD (Germany); CONICET (Argentina); MRC (United Kingdom); and Horizon 2020 (Europe). Dr. Ibañez is the founder of significant regional initiatives, such as the Multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat) and the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium on Dementia (LAC-CD). He is an active member of different societies (Team taskforce of the Human Affectome Project, President of the Latin-American Chapter of the Society for Social Neuroscience, and Communications Chair of the Electrophysiology PIA of the ISTAART). He has directed or co-directed more than 35 postgraduate research projects and created and directed in 2020 the first major in Behavioral Sciences in South America. He has received prestigious international awards (including the Nelson Butters Award of the International Neuropsychological Society; Latin-American Award of the Society for Psychophysiological Research-four times; International Society for Neuroimaging in Psychiatry Award) and local recognitions to his work in brain health (Outstanding recognition by the Legislature of Buenos Aires in 2019; and the Outstanding Neighbor Award of San Juan City, his birthplace, in 2021). He also has established current international collaborations with centers of excellence such as the MRC Cognition and Brain Science Unit of Cambridge and the University of Edinburgh (United Kingdom), the University of Heidelberg (Germany), The University of Sydney (Australia), and the Universities of California San Francisco, New York, Caltech, Chicago, and Wisconsin (USA), among others. He is associate editor of different journals. His intense work has helped Latin American translational neuroscience by establishing a framework to engage scientists through internships, workshops, Masters and Ph.D. programs, organizing educational activities for the health community, focusing on cognitive neuroscience. His research has been highlighted in different outlets, including the BBC, Nature, Nature News, Discovery Channel, Popular Science, Daily Mail, Newsweek, Le Monde, and Oxford University Press.
Personal web: https://dragustinibanez.com/en/
