Dr. Bill Van Nostrand is the Herrmann Professor of Neuroscience and Co-Director of the George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience.
He is one of the field’s leading researchers on the pathogenesis of cerebral amyloid angiopathy, cerebral small vessel disease, and Alzheimer’s disease using biochemical, molecular, cellular and animal model approaches. He is noted for developing transgenic animal models of disease that have provided key insights into disease processes. His current collaborations include work at Yale University; Stony Brook University; universities in the Netherlands including Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, Leiden University Medical Center in Leiden, and Amsterdam University Medical Center in Amsterdam; and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Originally trained as a biochemist, Dr. Van Nostrand is recognized as the first to purify and characterize amyloid precursor protein (APP), the progenitor of amyloid-beta (A-beta), a key component involved in the pathogenesis of ADRD. He has more than 150 publications in journals including Nature, Science, Nature Communications, The Lancet, Neuron, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Van Nostrand holds several patents, and has served on numerous national and private advisory committees for the National Institutes of Health. He is a recipient of a Research Career Development Award from the NIH and the Alzheimer’s Association Zenith Award in recognition of his contributions to the field of Alzheimer’s disease research.
Dr. Van Nostrand received his Ph.D. in biological sciences from University of California, Irvine, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow in biochemistry prior to joining the faculty as a Research Assistant Professor and Associate Adjunct Professor. He is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stony Brook University, where he spent 20 years on the faculty prior to joining the George & Anne Ryan Institute for Neuroscience in 2017, along with colleague John Robinson.
Since arriving at URI, he has attracted more than $10 million dollars in NIH and private support and is an active mentor to Ryan Institute junior faculty in grant applications and career development.