Heather M. Snyder, Ph.D., is senior vice president, Medical & Scientific Relations, at the Alzheimer’s Association. In this role, she oversees Association funding initiatives that accelerate innovative Alzheimer’s and dementia research and provides opportunities for the global dementia community to connect and collaborate.

Dr. Snyder leads the Association’s International Research Grant Program and other strategic funding initiatives that accelerate promising investigations into our understanding of Alzheimer's and dementia. As the world’s largest nonprofit funder of Alzheimer's research, the Association currently has $430 million invested in more than 1,150 active projects in 57 countries spanning six continents.

As part of the Association's funding portfolio, Dr. Snyder works closely with the Part the Cloud program, advancing innovative approaches for potential therapies into phase 1 and phase 2 clinical studies. Dr. Snyder has also been instrumental in advancing programs to further explore sex and gender-based differences in disease vulnerability as part of a larger initiative aimed to understand how these biological and genetic factors may shape disease development and progression in women.

Dr. Snyder provides leadership on several of the Association’s cutting-edge scientific initiatives. To increase knowledge of prevention and risk reduction, she serves on the executive team for the U.S. Study to Protect Brain Health Through Lifestyle Intervention to Reduce Risk (U.S. POINTER). Dr. Snyder works with other global leaders on the Association’s International Cohort Study of Chronic Neurological Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 to better understand the impact of COVID on the brain, including factors that may contribute to Alzheimer’s and other dementia. She is also a study team investigator for the Alzheimer’s Network for Treatment and Diagnostics (ALZ-NET), an initiative to gain insight on FDA-approved novel Alzheimer’s therapies in real world practice.

Dr. Snyder is the chair of the Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs for Alzheimer's Disease. She also serves on the Research Committee for the American Heart Association and on the external advisory boards for a number of ongoing initiatives in the Alzheimer's and related dementia research space.