This year’s Irma Parhad award winner is the late Dr. Angeles Garcia. It is hard to ignore the parallel between Dr. Garcia and Dr. Parhad herself, as in June 2019, Dr. Garcia’s productive life was also cut short much too early due to an insidious and unfortunate illness. Dr. Garcia joined C5R in May 2002 and served on the C5R Board as President from 2008 to 2010 and as Past president for two more years. Dr. Garcia was passionate for patient wellness and she created and implemented training modules for family doctors for earlier detection of mild dementia. Dr. Garcia served on many working groups involving Canadian guidelines for dementia and national and provincial guidelines for vitamin B12 and folic acid. She also served on international working groups to advance the diagnosis and treatment of dementia globally. Along with her many achievements, she developed a rich research portfolio that included investigations of cognition and various biomarkers or predictors of dementia. These include but are not limited to the effect of B12 and cortisol levels on dementia severity, using saccadic eye movements and fMRI as tools to assess cognition, and developing a patent-pending method for AD detection using 3D telomere profiles of cells and their patterns. This exciting and important telomere research continues. Dr. Garcia’s family members were notified that C5R was honoring Dr. Garcia’s memory and her achievements, and her award certificate was sent to her husband.
Consortium of Canadian Centres for Clinical Cognitive Research
