Michael D. Geschwind

Key facts

• Role: professor of neurology at the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, Michael J. Homer Chair in Neurology, clinician-researcher at the Memory and Aging Center, leading its rapidly progressive dementia clinical research program.
• Training: MD and PhD (neuroscience) through the NIH Medical Scientist Training Program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
• Program firsts claimed by his profile: helped set up the first US inpatient hospital program for rapidly progressive dementia and helped run the first US treatment study for CJD.
• Prion research funding: principal investigator of tracking longitudinal change in presymptomatic genetic prion disease (NIH R01AG062562, 1 August 2019 to 31 May 2025, after an R56 award in 2018 to 2019) and of predicting progression of human prion disease (NIH R01AG031189, December 2007 to May 2020).
• Other roles: directs the UCSF MAC Huntington's disease center, co-directs the autoimmune encephalopathy clinic, and is co-principal investigator on a CADASIL project (to August 2027).
• Recent outputs listed on his profile (titles only, papers not opened): neuropsychiatric symptoms in sporadic CJD (Brain, January 2026), multiomic analyses of CJD risk genes (Brain, September 2025), a rapidly progressive dementia definition using the Clinical Dementia Rating (Neurology, January 2026), a genome-wide study of duration and age at onset in sporadic CJD (PLoS One, 2024) and a PrPC signaling paper (Stem Cell Reports, June 2026).

Timeline

1. 2007Start of the NIH prion progression prediction grant.
2. 2019Start of the NIH presymptomatic genetic prion disease grant.
3. 2020End date of the NIH prion progression prediction grant.
4. 2025End date of the NIH presymptomatic genetic prion disease grant.
5. 2025Brain paper on CJD risk genes lists him as co-author.
6. 2026Brain paper on neuropsychiatric symptoms in sporadic CJD lists him as co-author.
7. 2026Stem Cell Reports paper on PrPC signaling lists him as co-author.
8. 2026CJD Foundation posts the 2026 conference programme with Geschwind on the genetic prion workshop.