Aimee Kao, MD, PhD, headlines this year’s Denham Harman, MD, PhD, Lectureship in Biomedical Gerontology. The annual lecture will be held during the UNMC Department of Geriatrics Grand Rounds on Friday, April 12.
Dr. Kao is an associate professor of neurology and the John Douglas French Foundation Endowed Professor at the University of California, San Francisco, whose clinical expertise includes the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, vascular dementia, Lewy body disease and frontotemporal lobar degeneration.
In addition to leading the NIH-supported Tau Center Without Walls, Dr. Kao directs the UCSF Tau Consortium Human Fibroblast Bank. She has received multiple awards, including the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Distinguished Investigator Award in Neurodegenerative Diseases, the Glenn Award for Research in the Biological Mechanisms of Aging and the Derek Denny Brown Young Neurological Scholar Award.
The Harman Lectureship was established in 2002 by the University of Nebraska Foundation in honor of the late Dr. Harman, a famed researcher who served on the UNMC faculty for 52 years from 1958 through 2010.
Dr. Harman was nominated six times for a Nobel Prize and was called the “Father of the Free Radical Theory of Aging.” He proposed the theory in 1954 and discovered the role of antioxidants (vitamins C, E and beta-carotene) in fighting heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Harman’s wife, Helen Harman, was instrumental in his pursuit of a medical degree and ultimately conducting research in the area of aging. Dr. Harman died in 2014 at age 98.