Keynote 1

Prof. Dr. Lorenz Granrath, Smart Aging Research Center (SARC), Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan

Presentation of the EU-Japan Project E-VITA, a Virtual Coach for Smart Aging

E-VITA: EU-Japan Virtual Coach for Smart Aging. The combination of the socio-technology excellence “Made in Europe” with the excellence of technology “Made in Japan” will produce an innovative coaching system based on the needs and wishes of older adults. The virtual coach will provide personalized recommendations and interventions to improve the quality of life of older adults in Europe and Japan while offering opportunities to SME’s and NGO’s to explore the feasibility of a new ecosystem. The impact should be Empowering older adults to better manage their own activities will have an impact on increasing the wellbeing of older adults and will improve their quality of life via socio-technological support of “Active and Healthy Ageing” in Europe and Japan.

Prof. Dr. Lorenz Granrath is Specially Appointed Assistant Professor at Tohoku University, Smart Aging Research Center (SARC) since May 2021. The competence of SARC is fighting dementia by analysing the correlations with health and lifestyle. Dr. Granrath is supporting SARC in organising the  Japanese side of the project e-VITA, especially looking at the dissemination and he is initiating new international collaborations with institutes and industry for SARC. Besides that, he also acts as Non-Key Expert for the EU in Human Centric AI, he is Senior Advisor for some companies and Visiting Lecturer for the Ph.D. course EnergyNext at Waseda University. He worked the past seven years as Senior Innovation Coordinator at the AI Research Center of AIST, initiating international AI research projects. Before that he set up the Fraunhofer Representative Office Japan since 2001 building up a big network in industry and science.

Keynote 2

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Holger Fröhlich, Head of AI & Data Science Group Deputy Head of Department of Bioinformatics Fraunhofer SCAI,  Sankt Augustin, Germany

Using AI to Move Towards Better Individualized Treatment

Despite strong efforts in research, the past decade has not yielded any substantial improvement in treatments of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). While there are currently more than 120 compounds tested in clinical trials, the disease is still treated with the same compounds as >15-20 years ago, which have only a small symptomatic effect and do not modify disease progression. Recent failures in clinical trials and the highly controversial approval of aducanumab highlight the need for new and better drugs. Given the progressive, neurodegenerative nature of the disease it is of utmost importance to therapeutically intervene as early as possible. At the same time the high heterogeneity of the disease is a challenge that needs to be addressed.

Based on examples from own work I will point out the tight connection between the needs for earlier diagnosis, patient stratification and prediction of disease progression and the development of modern machine learning algorithms, which can integrate multiple data modalities, such as genetic factors, cognitive function and brain pathophysiology. In conclusion, the access to sufficiently large, multi-modal patient-level data is of utmost relevance to realize the vision of a more effective and better individualized treatment of AD driven by AI.

Prof. Dr. Holger Fröhlich holds a Diploma and PhD in Computer Science. After positions as a postdoc at the German Cancer Research Center and as a Senior Scientist at Cellzome AG (now an enterprise of Glaxo-Smith-Kline), he was appointed an associate professorship at the University of Bonn in 2010. In 2015 he moved back to industry and became the Director and Head of an AI and Data Science research team within the global biopharmaceutical company UCB. Since 12/2019 HF is Head of the AI & Data Science group and Deputy Head of the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) in Sankt Augustin. In addition, he is teaching as an honorary Professor in the Master programs Life Science Informatics and Computer Science at the University of Bonn.

Holger Fröhlich’s focus is on the development Data Science and AI methods for applications in Precision Medicine, early Drug Discovery and System Medicine.  For this purpose, Holger Fröhlich has used and developed a broad spectrum of different approaches over the last 20 years. He has developed multiple AI methods for modeling longitudinal patient data, integration of different data modalities, and combination of knowledge with data driven approaches. He is author and co-author of more than 130 publications (h-index 37), and he has been working within several national and international consortia, such as IDENTIREST (BMBF), AETIONOMY (IMI), RADAR-AD (IMI), The Virtual Brain Cloud (H2020) NFDI4Health (DFG) and DIGIPD (ERA Per Med).

Keynote 3

Craig Stark, Ph.D., James L. McGaugh Chair in Neurobiology of Learning and Memory Professor, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Director, Facility for Imaging and Brain Research (FIBRE) & Campus Center for Neuroimaging (CCNI), School of Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine

Old Brains, new tricks: Can environmental enrichment improve aging memory?

Memory complaints are the most common cognitive concern of individuals as they age, and it’s no wonder people are worried about it. Problems with memory are a hallmark feature of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. However, memory lapses are a normal part of memory, even when we’re young. What’s more, these lapses get more common as we age, even when there are no clinical signs of dementia. The first part of the talk will cover my laboratory’s research into these age-related changes and how we can use sophisticated neuroimaging and behavioral techniques to study the effects of aging on our brains and our memory. A question naturally arises from this work: Can we do anything to slow or reverse these changes? The second part of the talk will describe my lab’s recent efforts to adapt rodent studies on “environmental enrichment” to humans. These studies show how engaging in and exploring large virtual worlds can actually improve memory ability and may ameliorate age-related memory decline.