Yakeel Quiroz, PhD
Program Faculty

Dr. Quiroz is Associate Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, MA. She is the Director of the MGH Familial Dementia Neuroimaging Lab and the Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention Program-MAPP. She earned her master’s degree in cognitive neuroscience and PhD in clinical psychology from Boston University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in neuropsychology and brain imaging of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) at MGH. Her research interests include brain imaging, genomics, early detection and preclinical biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias.​

She is the principal investigator of two NIH NIA R01 grants: 1) The Colombia-Boston (COLBOS) biomarker study of autosomal-dominant Alzheimer’s disease, which follows individuals from the world’s largest extended family with a single, AD-causing mutation (E280A in Presenilin-1); and 2) The Boston Latino Aging Study (BLAST), which seeks to characterize AD-related biomarkers and dementia risk and protective factors in older Latinos living in the US. She is also the PI of an Alzheimer’s Association Research Grant that seeks to identify genetic modifiers of cognitive resilience and Alzheimer’s resistance in individuals with ADAD (2022-2025). She is Co-Investigator of the Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS, PI: Sperling), a longitudinal biomarker study of cognitively unimpaired older individuals at risk for sporadic AD, and Co-Investigator of the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Consortium (ACTC, PIs: Aisen, Sperling, Petersen).

Dr. Quiroz’s work has already provided evidence of brain abnormalities in cognitively-intact individuals at genetic risk for AD, decades before their clinical onset. Her findings have helped the field to re-conceptualize Alzheimer as a sequence of changes that begins decades before cognitive decline, and which may be targeted by promising disease-slowing treatments at a time in which they might have their most profound effect. Her research work has resulted in several publications that have generated considerable discussion in the field and has achieved recognition by colleagues at the national and international level. Dr. Quiroz’s work has been recognized with several awards, including an NIH Director’s Early Independence Award, the FABBS Foundation Early Career Impact Award, the MGH Research Scholar Award (2020-2025) and the Alzheimer’s Association Inge Grundke-Iqbal Award for Alzheimer’s Research.

​

Dr. Quiroz also serves as Director of the MGH Multicultural Assessment and Research Center (MARC), and the MGH postdoctoral and predoctoral training programs in Multicultural Neuropsychology. In her spare time she enjoys spending time with her family and friends, traveling to new places, and listening to music.