Dr. Mary Sano is an Associate Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, in Neurology, in The Gertrude H. Sergievsky Center at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons. She has been involved in designing and conducting clinical trials in the areas of Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease and mild cognitive impairment of aging. In 1989 she received the Florence and Herbert Irving Clinical Research Career Award to develop methodologies for the assessment of therapeutic agents in Alzheimer's Disease. Dr. Sano directed the first Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study multi-center trial of Vitamin E and Selegiline (treatments which delayed the clinical progression of Alzheimer's Disease). In 1998 she received the Veris Award for this study. Her research interests are in clinical trial design and the impact of pharmacological treatments on the functional abilities of individual with cognitive impairments. At present she is the Director of the Minority Recruitment Core and the Chair of the Committee for the Development of Pharmacoeconomics Assessments for the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study. Other areas of interest include the role of depression in cognitive loss, and measuring quality of life in disease of aging. Most recently she has been funded as the Principal Investigator of the first National Institute on Aging funded multi-centered Primary Prevention trial using estrogens to prevent Alzheimer's Disease and memory loss in women with a family history of Alzheimer's Disease.