Martha Clare Morris, Sc.D.

JAD profile

Affiliation(s): 

Rush University

Areas of Interest: 

Alzheimer disease, cognitive decline, epidemiology, nutrition and metabolism

Biography & Research: 

Dr. Martha Clare Morris is Professor of Epidemiology, Director of the Section of Nutrition and Nutritional Epidemiology in the Department of Internal Medicine, and Assistant Provost of Community Research at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. She received her doctoral degree in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. She has over 20 years experience studying risk factors in the development of Alzheimer’s disease and other health problems of older persons, and in particular, how nutrition relates to these conditions. Dr. Morris has published findings on the relations of diet patterns, antioxidant nutrients, dietary fats, and the B-vitamins to these conditions. She is the lead creator of the MIND diet for healthy brain aging. She has a long history of NIH and other funding to examine dietary risk factors of Alzheimer’s disease among 10,000 African American and Caucasian participants of the Chicago Health and Aging Project and the relation of tocopherols and brain metals to neuropathology and neurologic diseases among 1,200 Chicago participants of the Memory and Aging Project. She is also the Principal Investigator of a multi-center randomized trial of the MIND diet to prevent Alzheimer’s disease.