Sharp Brains: Brain Fitness and Cognitive Health News

Innovation Awards

We are pleased to announce the new annual Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards, designed to fos­ter inno­va­tion and best prac­tice shar­ing by cel­e­brat­ing out­stand­ing pio­neers who apply neuroplasticity-based research and tools in the “real world”. The awards will rec­og­nize orga­ni­za­tions that are devis­ing and imple­ment­ing results-oriented and scal­able ini­tia­tives that demon­strate their com­mit­ment to the brain fit­ness of their clients, mem­bers, patients, stu­dents or employ­ees, and show­case inno­v­a­tive uses of non-invasive tools to improve cog­ni­tive and emo­tional func­tions and “real-world” outcomes.

Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards

Prizes

1 Grand Prize Win­ner will receive: $2,500 check, con­sult­ing ses­sion with Sharp­Brains staff, 2 tick­ets for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mits in 2011; 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

2 Sil­ver Prize Win­ners will each receive: $1,000 check, con­sult­ing ses­sion with Sharp­Brains staff, 2 tick­ets for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mits in 2011, 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

7 Final­ists will each receive: $250 check, 1 ticket for each Sharp­Brains Sum­mits in 2011, 10 signed copies of The Sharp­Brains Guide to Brain Fitness

How to Apply

Orga­ni­za­tions can use this Entry Form to sub­mit entries (opens a Word document).

The 2010 Brain Fit­ness Inno­va­tion Awards will rec­og­nize unique ini­tia­tives that not only bring mea­sur­able ben­e­fits to end users but also are closely con­nected to fur­ther­ing the objec­tives of the orga­ni­za­tion in which they oper­ate, via (for exam­ple) increased customer/ patient sat­is­fac­tion, employee engage­ment, brand­ing ben­e­fits, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment gains, and oth­ers. All eli­gi­ble sub­mis­sions will be eval­u­ated based on the fol­low­ing criteria: Mea­sur­able Ben­e­fits for end users, Mea­sur­able Ben­e­fits for organization, Cre­ativ­ity and Inno­va­tion of approach, Scal­a­bil­ity of initiative, Value of Lessons Learned.

Main Dates

By April 15th: All entries col­lected
By April 30th: Sharp­Brains staff selects 10 final­ists
By May 15th: judges score final­ists and select 1 Grand Prize Win­ner and 2 Sil­ver Prize Win­ners
May 24th: Win­ners will be announced on Mon­day, May 24th, 2010


Con­firmed Judges:

shiv-babaBaba Shiv, Pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford Busi­ness School, con­ducts research on con­sumer deci­sion mak­ing and deci­sion neu­ro­science, with spe­cific empha­sis on the neu­ro­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of emo­tion and moti­va­tion in deci­sion mak­ing. His recent work exam­ines the poten­tial for non­con­scious placebo effects related to pric­ing. He is cur­rently the edi­tor of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Research and sits on the edi­to­r­ial board of the Jour­nal of Con­sumer Psy­chol­ogy and the Jour­nal of Mar­ket­ing Research.

Bill0828Bill Tucker, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, is a social entre­pre­neur who has founded and led both non­profit orga­ni­za­tions and for-profit com­pa­nies. He is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing the day-to-day oper­a­tions of Edu­ca­tion Sec­tor, and also leads pol­icy work focused on tech­nol­ogy and inno­va­tion. His involve­ment in edu­ca­tion dates to early in his career, when he man­aged a middle/high school stu­dent vol­un­teer and ser­vice learn­ing pro­gram, work­ing with 22 schools and over 75 non­profit orga­ni­za­tions, and served as a com­mu­nity orga­nizer for an adult lit­er­acy pro­gram. He is a grad­u­ate of Duke Uni­ver­sity and has both an MBA and a Master’s of Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford University.

murphyBrian Mur­phy, Pres­i­dent of De Anza Col­lege, has led De Anza Col­lege since 2004 with a key focus on the prepa­ra­tion of stu­dents to be active, involved cit­i­zens com­mit­ted to trans­form­ing their com­mu­ni­ties. Previously, Pres­i­dent Mur­phy served for 12 years as exec­u­tive direc­tor of the San Fran­cisco Urban Insti­tute at San Fran­cisco State Uni­ver­sity, and was chief con­sul­tant to the Cal­i­for­nia State Legislature’s reviews of the Mas­ter Plan for Higher Edu­ca­tion and the com­mu­nity col­lege reform process in the late 1980s. He has taught polit­i­cal the­ory and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara Uni­ver­sity and San Fran­cisco State University.

jenningsCharles Jen­nings, Direc­tor of the McGov­ern Insti­tute Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Pro­gram, MIT, became an edi­tor with the sci­en­tific jour­nal Nature fol­low­ing post­doc­toral stud­ies in devel­op­men­tal biol­ogy at Har­vard and MIT. He was the found­ing edi­tor of Nature Neu­ro­science, widely con­sid­ered a lead­ing jour­nal in its field. More recently, he was the first exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Har­vard Stem Cell Insti­tute, and he con­tin­ues to serve as an advi­sor to the Con­necti­cut Stem Cell Research Program.

house_for-webChuck House, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Stan­ford Media X, leads Stan­ford University’s Indus­try Affil­i­ate research pro­gram on media and tech­nol­ogy, and is a senior research scholar in the Human Sci­ences and Tech­nol­ogy Advanced Research divi­sion at Stan­ford. Pre­vi­ously, he was the direc­tor of Soci­etal Impact of Tech­nol­ogy for Intel Cor­po­ra­tion, and the first Direc­tor of Intel’s Vir­tual Research Col­lab­o­ra­tory. He recently co-authored The HP Phe­nom­e­non: Inno­va­tion and Busi­ness Trans­for­ma­tion (Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity Press, Octo­ber 2009).

colinmilnerColin Mil­ner, Founder and CEO of the Inter­na­tional Coun­cil on Active Aging (ICAA), is one of the world’s vision­ar­ies on the health and well-being of the older adult. Mil­ner is a mem­ber of the Global Agenda Coun­cils ini­tia­tive run by the World Eco­nomic Forum, the active-aging spokesper­son for the Cana­dian Asso­ci­a­tion of Fit­ness Pro­fes­sion­als, and the res­i­dent indus­try expert on aging for the Inter­na­tional Health, Rac­quet and Sports­club Asso­ci­a­tion. An award-winning writer, Mil­ner has authored more than 200 arti­cles on aging-related issues.

elizabeth_edgerly-head-shot-1Eliz­a­beth Edgerly, National Spokesper­son for Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion “Main­tain Your Brain”, is the Chief Pro­gram Offi­cer for the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion and national spokesper­son for the Association’s Main­tain Your Brain pro­gram. She over­sees the many pro­grams of the Asso­ci­a­tion for patients, fam­i­lies and health care pro­fes­sion­als. In addi­tion, she staffs the Med­ical Sci­en­tific Advi­sory Coun­cil of the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion – North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. She received her Ph.D. in clin­i­cal psy­chol­ogy at the State Uni­ver­sity of New York and spe­cial­ized in geropsy­chol­ogy and neu­ropsy­chol­ogy. Dr. Edgerly joined the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion after com­plet­ing a fel­low­ship in clin­i­cal geropsy­chol­ogy at the Palo Alto VA Hospital.

gloria_cavanaughGlo­ria Cavanaugh, For­mer Pres­i­dent of the Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, retired in 2006 as Pres­i­dent and CEO after lead­ing the orga­ni­za­tion for 31 years and trans­form­ing it from being a regional asso­ci­a­tion to a national one with over 6,000 mem­bers. Ms. Cavanaugh is a found­ing mem­ber and for­mer Board Chair of the National Alliance for Care­giv­ing, and served as a Judge for the AARP Best Employ­ers for Work­ers Over 50 Pro­gram. In addi­tion to man­ag­ing her San Francisco-based con­sult­ing prac­tice, Cavanaugh cur­rently serves on the boards of sev­eral orga­ni­za­tions and coalitions.

150px-Kenneth_Kosik-150x150Ken­neth Kosik, Co-Director of UC-Santa Bar­bara Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute, holds an M.D. degree from the Med­ical Col­lege of Penn­syl­va­nia. From 1980 until 2005 he held var­i­ous appoint­ments at the Har­vard Med­ical School where he became Pro­fes­sor of Neu­rol­ogy and Neu­ro­science. In the fall of 2004 he assumed the co-directorship of the Neu­ro­science Research Insti­tute and the Har­ri­man Chair at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Santa Bar­bara. He has received mul­ti­ple awards, includ­ing a Whitaker Health Sci­ences Award from Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy, the Derek Denny-Brown Neu­ro­log­i­cal Scholar Award from the Amer­i­can Neu­ro­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion, the Zenith Award from the Alzheimer’s Asso­ci­a­tion, and a NASA Group Achieve­ment Award to the Neu­ro­lab Sci­ence Team.

MargaretMorrisMar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher at Intel’s Dig­i­tal Health Group, stud­ies the ways that emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies can enhance men­tal and phys­i­cal well­be­ing. She con­ducts ethno­graphic research to iden­tify needs and works with engi­neers to develop and eval­u­ate exploratory pro­to­types. Prior to join­ing Intel in 2002, she stud­ied tech­nol­ogy adop­tion in Sapient’s Expe­ri­ence Mod­el­ling group. Margie com­pleted her Ph.D. in Clin­i­cal Psy­chol­ogy with a minor in Behav­ioural Neu­ro­science at the Uni­ver­sity of New Mex­ico, her clin­i­cal intern­ship at the San Fran­cisco VA Med­ical Cen­tre, and her post­doc­toral fel­low­ship at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. She has a B.A. in Eng­lish from Haver­ford College.

339fc3fNigel Smith, AARP Strat­egy and Plan­ning Direc­tor, is respon­si­ble for devel­op­ing decen­tral­ized inno­va­tion mod­els for AARP and for con­sult­ing with busi­ness units in the exe­cu­tion of inno­va­tion processes. Prior to AARP, Nigel was the Direc­tor or Prod­uct Inno­va­tion for Visa USA. Other pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences have been with McK­in­sey & Com­pany, Gold­man Sachs Group, and KPMG. Nigel holds a Mas­ters in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity and a Bach­e­lors in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion degree from Howard University.

picture-44Rod Fal­con, Direc­tor of Health Hori­zons Pro­gram at the Insti­tute For The Future, directs research across a range of health and health care issues with an empha­sis on the global health econ­omy: evolv­ing con­sumer health mar­kets, do-it-yourself health care, the shift­ing of care out­side clin­i­cal set­tings, and the grow­ing num­ber of peo­ple turn­ing to tech­nol­ogy to become better-than-well. Rod has a B.A. in Amer­i­can his­tory and eth­nic stud­ies and an M.P.P. from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. Out­side work, Rod keeps busy learn­ing the myr­iad sto­ries of his own large extended family.

DrMacknikStephen Mack­nik, Lab Direc­tor at Bar­row Neu­ro­log­i­cal Insti­tute, has seen his research and sci­en­tific out­reach activ­i­ties fea­tured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,The Chicago Tri­bune, The Boston Globe, NPR, and Der Spiegel, among hun­dreds of media sto­ries. He is board mem­ber of Sci­en­tific Amer­i­can, where he has pub­lished sev­eral fea­ture arti­cles and for which he pub­lished a free monthly online col­umn on the neu­ro­science of illusions.

susanhoffman.thumbnailSusan Hoff­man, Direc­tor of OLLI @ Berke­ley, leads the Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute within the Vice Provost’s Office for Teach­ing and Learn­ing at UC Berke­ley. For the past fif­teen years she has worked at UC and CSU cam­puses launch­ing new inter­dis­ci­pli­nary and inter­na­tional pro­grams. Before then, she served as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Cal­i­for­nia Con­fed­er­a­tion of the Arts, rep­re­sent­ing Cal­i­for­nia artists, art edu­ca­tors and arts orga­ni­za­tions in Sacra­mento and Wash­ing­ton for a decade. Her cre­ative work includes being a writer and film­maker. Her fac­ulty appoint­ments have been in cre­ative writ­ing, the­atre and polit­i­cal philosophy.

Fre­quently Asked Questions

Is there a for­mal nom­i­na­tion process?
No. Any orga­ni­za­tion can sub­mit an entry, and/ or encour­age oth­ers to do so.

Can a ven­dor and a client orga­ni­za­tion sub­mit a joint entry? if not, who sub­mits the entry, and who wins the Award?
The Awards are designed to directly rec­og­nize Users, not Ven­dors. The pri­mary orga­ni­za­tion to sub­mit an entry and receive the Award is the one using lat­est tools and pro­grams (technology-based on not) to take care of the brain fit­ness of their own clients/ patients/ employ­ees. Now, the tools and pro­grams used will be pub­licly rec­og­nized as part of Award Winner’s entry and case study.

Your eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria include “Value of Lessons Learned” (20%). What you mean by ‘lessons learned”?
Pio­neers are will­ing to learn by doing and to share insights from their expe­ri­ence with other orga­ni­za­tions which may be con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives. For exam­ple, what were some dif­fi­cul­ties in imple­ment­ing and grow­ing the pro­gram? what was end user response? how were results mea­sured? what tool/s were selected and why?

Will the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the sub­mit­ted Entries be shared? They may be great case stud­ies
Full 3 Win­ning Entries will be shared pub­licly, while full Final­ist Entries will only be shared with Sum­mit participants.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

Overview of Summit Agenda

Mon­day Jan­u­ary 18th, 2010:

8–8.15. My Con­tin­ued Love Affair with the Brain. Mar­ian
Dia­mond, UC-Berkeley

8.15–9.15am. Cog­ni­tion & Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity: The New Health & Well­ness
Frontier

  • Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains
  • Tom War­den, Allstate
  • David White­house, OptumHealth Behav­ioral Solutions
  • William Reich­man, Baycrest

9.30-11am. Tools for Safer Dri­ving: The Oppor­tu­nity with Teenagers
and Adults

  • Steven Aldrich, Posit Science
  • Shlomo Breznitz, CogniFit
  • Jerri Edwards, Uni­ver­sity of South Florida
  • Peter Chris­tian­son, Young Dri­vers of Canada

Noon-1.30pm. Baby Boomers and Beyond: Main­tain­ing Cog­ni­tive Vitality

  • Kunal Sarkar, Lumos Labs
  • Eliz­a­beth Zelin­ski, USC Davis School of Gerontology
  • Dan Michel, Dakim
  • Michael Cole, Viv­ity Labs

1.45–3.15pm. Next Gen­er­a­tion Cog­ni­tive & Emo­tional Health Assessments

  • Evian Gor­don, Brain Resource
  • Misha Pavel, OHSU
  • Albert “Skip” Rizzo, USC

3.30-4pm. The Future of Cog­ni­tive Health Tech — Intel’s Perspective

  • Mar­garet Mor­ris, Senior Researcher
  • Muki Hansteen-Izora, Strategist

Tues­day Jan­u­ary 19th, 2010:

8–8.15am. Inno­va­tion, Peo­ple and Tech­nol­ogy.Chuck House, Stan­ford Media X

815–9.15am. Neu­rocog­ni­tion & Med­i­cine: Impli­ca­tions for Research,
Diag­no­sis, and Treatment

  • Keith Wesnes, United BioSource Corporation
  • Adam Gaz­za­ley, UCSF
  • Michel Noir, SBT / HappyNeuron
  • Lau­rence Hir­sh­berg, Neu­roDe­vel­op­ment Center

9.30-11am. How Can Neu­ro­science Inform and Refine Men­tal Health Care

  • Michael Merzenich, UCSF
  • Torkel Kling­berg, Karolin­ska Institute
  • Joshua Stein­er­man, Albert Ein­stein – Mon­te­fiore Med­ical Center
  • Yaakov Stern, Colum­bia University

Noon-1.30pm. Inte­grat­ing Cog­ni­tion with Home Health and Med­ical
Home Models

  • Ken­neth Kosik, UC Santa Barbara
  • Jonas Jendi, Cogmed
  • Holly Jimi­son, Ore­gon Health & Sci­ence University
  • Jesse Wright, Uni­ver­sity of Louisville

1.45–3.15pm. What’s Next: Entre­pre­neur­ial And Fund­ing Perpectives

  • Tim Chang, Nor­west Ven­ture Partners
  • Richard Levin­son, Atten­tion Con­trol Systems
  • Lisa Schooner­man, VibrantBrains
  • Veronika Litin­ski, MaRS Ven­ture Group

3.30-4pm. Future Stan­dards and Chan­nels for Neuroplasticity-based
Interventions

  • Stephen Mack­nik, Bar­row Neu­ro­log­i­cal Institute
  • Charles Jen­nings, MIT
  • P Murali Doraiswamy, Duke University

Wednes­day, Jan­u­ary 20th, 2010:

Expo Day

  • 9am. Bay­crest
  • 10am. Cog­niFit
  • 11am. Posit Science
  • Noon. SBT/ HappyNeuron
  • 1pm. Sharp­Brains