Dr. Brunden oversees drug discovery programs in the areas of Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal lobar degeneration and Parkinson’s disease. Prior to joining the Penn faculty, he served as a vice president leading drug discovery programs in two public biotechnology companies. Earlier in his career, he was an NIH-funded faculty member within the Biochemistry Department at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. Dr. Brunden received a BS from Western Michigan University, with biology and health chemistry majors, a PhD in biochemistry from Purdue University, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic. He recently served as chair of the NSD-C translational research study section for NIH-NINDS, and serves as an ad hoc reviewer for NIH-NINDS and NIH-NCATS. He is also an advisor for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and an ad hoc reviewer for multiple scientific journals. Dr. Brunden has over 75 publications and a number of patents.