Keynote Speaker
Gerd Kempermann, M.D., was born in Cologne, Germany and studied medicine in Cologne and Freiburg. After two years of residency in Neuropathology he became postdoctoral fellow in Fred H. Gage's group at the Salk Institute in La Jolla. Since then he has been working on the biology of endogenous neural stem cells in the healthy and diseased brain and on the functional relevance of adult neurogenesis. He is Group Leader at CRTD - Center for Regenerative Therapies TU Dresden. The goal of his lab is to understand how new neurons contribute to brain function and health and disease and how lifestyle and activity build a “neurogenic reserve” to allow functional compensation in the face of old age and beginning dementia.