Directors & Staff

With the board’s supervision, nearly $28 million dollars has been generated to execute a wide range of research programs, which now involve multiple institutions in several countries.  

Board of Directors: Robert H. Brown | Robert J. Ferrante | Lawrence J. Hayward | H. Robert Horvitz | Tom Maniatis | Craig C. Mello | Merit E. Cudkowicz | Jonathan Roberts | Alan Abraham

Support Staff: Donna Crowe | Traci Bisson

Robert H. Brown, Jr., D.Phil., M.D, President, Clerk

Robert H. Brown, Jr., D.Phil., M.D., earned his bachelor’s degree in biophysics at Amherst College, a doctorate of philosophy in neurophysiology at Oxford University and a doctorate in medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is presently the Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Dr. Brown’s primary research interest has been inherited, paralytic neuromuscular disorders with a focus, since 1980, on ALS. He currently serves as the director and organizer of the ALS Therapy Alliance, and is a non-voting member on the board.

As part of a consortium of investigators, Dr. Brown played a central role in the discovery of mutations or genetic variants in several ALS-related genes including cytosolic superoxide dismutase, alsin, dynactin, KIFAP3 and FUS/TLS.

Dr. Brown has also identified gene defects causing three other diseases known as Miyoshi myopathy (dysferlin), hyperkalemic periodic paralysis (skeletal muscle sodium channel) and familial sensory neuropathy (serine palmitoyltransferase).

Robert J. Ferrante, Ph.D., M.Sc., Treasurer

Robert J. Ferrante, Ph.D., M.Sc., is a professor of neurology, pathology and laboratory medicine, psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at the Boston University School of Medicine. He is the director of the Experimental Neuropathology Unit and Translational Therapeutics Laboratory at the Bedford Veterans’ Affairs Medical Centerin Bedford, Massachusetts. Dr. Ferrante has a wide-range of knowledge about the neuropathology and mechanisms of neurodegeneration in adult-onset neurological diseases, especially ALS, with more than 30 years experience in clinical and experimental neurology. He is considered an expert in the application of experimental models of disease and in bench to bedside translational studies. Dr. Ferrante is a member of the Northeast ALS Consortium and is a steering committee member on six current human clinical trials using therapeutic agents that were developed in his laboratories. He is currently the director and co-principal proponent of a multi-center phase one clinical trial in ALS for the Veterans’ Administration.

Over the past 10 years, Dr. Ferrante has developed one of the premier translational programs for developing and characterizing therapeutic strategies for neurological diseases.

His laboratory has been a driving force in completing pre-clinical drug trials in mice for direct translation to human clinical trials in ALS patients.

Lawrence J. Hayward, M.D., Ph.D., Director

Lawrence J. Hayward, M.D., Ph.D. received his doctorate degrees in neuroscience and medicine from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. He completed a neurology residency and neuromuscular disease fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. During that time, his research focused on neuromuscular conditions caused by defective ion channels. In 2000, Dr. Hayward started his own laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as an assistant professor of neurology. Dr. Hayward became an associate professor in 2003 and serves as joint faculty in the departments of physiology, biochemistry and molecular pharmacology, and the program in neuroscience. He sees patients regularly in the Neuromuscular Clinic and on the wards, contributes to medical school and resident teaching, and serves as a mentor for graduate students and fellows in the laboratory.

In 1998, Dr. Hayward initiated biochemical studies with Dr. Robert Brown to identify toxic properties of mutant SOD1 enzymes that cause familial ALS.

Dr. Hayward’s group and collaborators have shown that impaired zinc binding and other vulnerabilities produce misfolded forms of the SOD1 protein that are prone to aggregation or other abnormal interactions.  Since 2008, the lab has focused upon establishing new in vivo models using mouse and zebrafish systems to investigate mechanisms by which mutant forms of nucleic acid binding proteins cause ALS.

H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D., Director

H. Robert Horvitz, Ph.D., received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002; is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; a neurobiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital; and a member of the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the MIT Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Dr. Horvitz received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and performed his Ph.D. studies in biology at Harvard University.

Dr. Horvitz was a postdoctoral scientist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, and has been an assistant, associate and full professor in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Horvitz has received numerous awards for his accomplishments. Some of these honors include: Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievement in Health (1995); General Motors Cancer Research Foundation, Sloan Prize (1998); Gairdner Foundation International Award (1999); March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology (2000); the Genetics Society of America Medal (2001); the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience (2001); the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences (2002); the Peter Gruber Foundation Genetics Prize (2002); the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor (2002); and the Alfred G. Knudson Award of the National Cancer Institute (2005). He has also received several honorary degrees and has served on many editorial boards and committees.

Dr. Horvitz has achieved world-wide recognition for his discoveries of cell death genes and his delineation of the molecular pathways through which these genes operate. These discoveries continue to have new and compelling implications across basic cell biology and much of medicine, including the fields of cancer and neurodegenerative diseases, like ALS.

Tom Maniatis, Ph.D., Director

Tom Maniatis, Ph.D., is the Isidore S. Edelman Professor and Chairman of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the Columbia University Medical Center. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a doctorate in molecular biology from Vanderbilt University. His postdoctoral studies were carried out at Harvard University and at the Medical Research Council for Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

Dr. Maniatis has held research and academic positions at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and  he recently retired from Harvard University after 30 years on the faculty.  

Dr. Maniatis’ research has been recognized by numerous awards, including the Eli Lilly Award in Microbiology and Immunology, the Scientific Achievement Award of the American Medical Association, the Richard Lounsbery Award for Biology and Medicine, and the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award in Biotechnology and Medicine, as well as membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.  

Dr. Maniatis is best known for pioneering the development and application of recombinant DNA methods to the study of gene regulation. His research has impacted a broad spectrum of biomedical fields, from basic mechanisms of gene expression to advances in understanding human genetic and inflammatory diseases.  Dr Maniatis’ laboratory is currently using both mouse and human pluripotent stem cells to study ALS disease mechanisms.

Craig C. Mello, Ph.D., Director

Dr. Craig C. Mello is the Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine, and Co-director, RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. He received his B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry from Brown University in 1982, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990. 

From 1990 to 1994, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA.  Dr. Mello is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and Co-director of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Mello’s pioneering research on RNAi, in collaboration with Dr. Andrew Fire, has been recognized with many prestigious awards culminating with the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Dr. Mello, along with his colleague, Dr. Andrew Fire, discovered the process by which a particular form of ribonucleic acid – RNA, the cellular material responsible for the transmission of genetic information – can silence targeted genes.  This RNAi process offers astounding potential for understanding and manipulating the cellular basis of human disease, and RNAi is now the state-of-the-art method by which scientists can “knock out” the expression of specific genes to thus define the biological functions of those genes.  Just as important has been the finding that RNAi is a normal process of genetic regulation that takes place during development, opening a new window on developmental gene regulation.

Merit E. Cudkowicz, M.D., Director

Dr. Merit Cudkowicz is a Professor of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital, at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cudkowicz earned her Bachelors of Science degree in Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed medical training at the Health Science and Technology program of Harvard Medical School. She obtained a Master's degree in Clinical Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She was a Resident and Chief Resident in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). She was a fellow in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/ Massachusetts Institute of Technology Clinical Investigator Training Program from 1994 to 1996.

Dr. Cudkowicz's research and clinical activities are dedicated to the study and treatment of patients with neurodegenerative disorders, in particular amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Dr. Cudkowicz directs the MGH ALS clinic and the MGH Neurology Clinical Trials Unit. She is one of the founders and co-directors of the Northeast ALS Consortium, a group of 92 clinical sites in the United States and Canada dedicated to performing collaborative academic led clinical trials in ALS. In conjunction with the NEALS consortium, she planned and completed 7 multi-center clinical trials in ALS and is currently leading three new trials in ALS. Dr. Cudkowicz received the American Academy of Neurology 2009 Sheila Essay ALS award.  

She has been a pioneer in promoting and developing more efficient methods of testing new therapies in people with ALS. She is actively mentoring young neurologists in clinical investigation in ALS and related neurodegenerative disorders. She is Dr. Cudkowicz is on the medical advisory board for the Muscular Dystrophy Association and the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association.

Jonathan C. Roberts, Director

Jonathan C. Roberts is Executive Vice President, Rx Purchasing, Pricing and Network Relations for CVS Caremark. In his current position he is responsible for PBM Trade and Retail Pharmaceutical Purchasing, New Product Development, Underwriting and PBM Networks.

Mr. Roberts is a seasoned retail pharmacy executive with more than 30 years of experience in retail pharmacy, 18 of those with CVS Caremark. He is a results-driven, experienced leader with a diverse mix of field management, business operations and information systems integration experience. He most recently served as Chief Information Officer for CVS Caremark, where he spearheaded several key initiatives, including the Pharmacy Service Initiative (PSI). PSI has enhanced pharmacy performance at CVS/pharmacy, and has been highlighted in business case studies at the Harvard Business School and Yale School of Management.

Mr. Roberts is a member of the SureScripts Executive Advisory Council and the eHealth Initiative’s Leadership Council. He also sits on the ALS Therapy Alliance’s Board of Directors.  

He earned his degree in pharmacy from the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Pharmacy, and is a graduate of the Wharton Executive Management Program.

Alan Abraham, Director

Alan Abraham is the president of Granite State Development, a private, not-for-profit company established in 1982 to administer the Small Business Administration’s 504 Loan Program. It operates throughout New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont. Abraham graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Science degree in history and earned his Master of Business Administration in finance and investments from George Washington University. After losing a family member to ALS, he joined the ATA and developed the CVS/pharmacy campaign jointly with Mr. Jon Roberts of CVS/pharmacy.

Donna Crowe, Administration

Donna Crowe is the Supervisor of Neurology and Executive Assistant to Dr. Robert H. Brown, Jr. at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center / Medical School.

Ms. Crowe previously worked with Dr. Brown at the Massachusetts General Hospital as the Office Manager for the Cecil B. Day Research Laboratory for 18 years before moving to UMass.  Donna has played an active administrative role in the ALS Therapy Alliance since its beginning in 2000.  She is responsible for managing the organizations grant recipient awards, annual board meetings and also acts as liaison between researchers and ATA board members.

Traci Bisson, Project Research Manager

Traci Bisson has worked with the ALS Therapy Alliance since 2002 managing its annual Researching a Cure fundraising campaign with CVS/pharmacy, which has raised nearly $28 million.

Traci also manages the organization's fundraising activities, website and blog, marketing and social media strategies and public relations.