IAPRD 2025 Award Winners

Award Lecture
Human Mid Brain Organoids in Parkinson’s disease: advances and limitations
Thursday, 8 May 2025 during the opening ceremony

Dr. EK Tan is a senior consultant neurologist and deputy CEO at National Neuroscience Institute, Singapore and Professor at Duke NUS Medical School. He completed his clinical and laboratory fellowship training under Joseph Jankovic and Tetsuo Ashizawa in Houston Texas, specializing in neurogenetics.

Dr. Tan has held various appointments in various scientific organisations including as nomination committee chairman in IAPRD and IEC member of MDS. He has helped promote movement disorders as a speciality in Asia and globally, and has led many of the education efforts. He has served as an associate editor for several journals including PRD, clinical PRD, European Journal of Neurology, among others. His research interests are varied ranging from clinical epidemiology, genetics, clinical trials and experimental therapeutics. He has >scientific 600 publications with a H index of 90.

For his contributions, he has previously received Marsden Lectureship and Mizuno Lectureship awards.

Melvin Yahr Award

Award Lecture
Breaking Barriers: Using Technology to Increase Access to Parkinson’s Research
Thursday, 8 May 2025 during the opening ceremony

Caroline M. Tanner, MD, PhD, FAAN, FANA, received her MD degree from Loyola University and trained in neurology and movement disorders at Rush University in Chicago. She received her PhD in environmental health sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the Roger Evans and Aey Phanachet Professor in Parkinson’s Disease and Vice Chair for Clinical Research in the Department of Neurology at the Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco. She previously was Director of Clinical Research at the Parkinson’s Institute.

Dr. Tanner’s clinical practice specializes in movement disorders. Her research interests include descriptive epidemiology, environmental and genetic determinants, biomarkers, early detection, nonmotor disease features and clinical trials for all stages of disease. She has a long-standing commitment to Veterans health, beginning with a study in World War II Veteran twins and formerly directed the Parkinson’s Disease Research Education and Clinical Center at the San Francisco VA Medical. Dr. Tanner and her colleagues have identified associations between exposures including certain pesticides, solvents and persistent environmental pollutants and increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, and identified gene-environment interactions. She is a founding member and past co-Chair of the Parkinson Study Group and has participated in numerous clinical trials over nearly 4 decades. Most recently, she is co-principal investigator of the innovative Trial of Parkinson’s and Zolendronate (TOPAZ), a completely home-based study focused on fracture prevention in people with Parkinson’s disease. Her current work also includes serving as the principal investigator of the Fox Insight online study and as a member of the leadership team of the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study, serving as lead investigator for several online initiatives. She has been fortunate to serve as mentor to talented students from many countries, who themselves are now leading researchers and educators worldwide.

Her honors include the White House Champions of Change for Parkinson’s (2015), International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society Honorary Member (2020), the Tom Isaacs Award – Cure Parkinson’s Trust & Van Andel Institute (2020), the Robert A. Pritzker Prize – Michael J Fox Foundation (2020), the Advocacy Award – Parkinson’s Policy Forum (2021), the Robert A. Wartenberg lectureship – American Academy of Neurology (2021), the Stanley Fahn Lecture Award – International Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders Society (2023) and the International Association of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders Melvin Yahr Award Lecture (2025).