Dr. Launer received her PhD in Epidemiology and Nutrition from Cornell University in 1987. After a three year post-doctoral fellowship at NICHD, she moved to the Netherlands. In positions at Erasmus University Medical School and the National Institute of Health and the Environment she was principle investigator or collaborator on several large epidemiologic studies of dementia and migraine headache. In 1999 she joined the Laboratory of Epidemiology, Demography, and Biometry to lead the Neuroepidemiology Section. Studies in the Neuroepidemiology Section focus on understanding the contribution of genetic, inflammatory, metabolic, vascular, and hormonal factors to sub-clinical and clinical outcomes in brain disease and investigating the links between brain disease and other common diseases of old age. Research is conducted in the context of large epidemiologic studies, which allow us to test in the general population, hypotheses on risk/protective factors and mechanisms for brain disease identified at the bench.