Kenneth M. Langa, PhD, MD

Dr. Langa is the Cyrus Sturgis Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Institute for Social Research, and an Associate Director of the Institute of Gerontology, all at the University of Michigan. He is also Co-Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), and Principal Investigator of the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) Project, both funded by the National Institute on Aging.

Dr. Langa received an MD and PhD in Public Policy at the University of Chicago as a Fellow in the Pew Program for Medicine, Arts, and the Social Sciences. He is a General Internist, and an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).

Dr. Langa’s research focuses on the epidemiology and costs of chronic disease in older adults, with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. He has published more than 350 peer-reviewed articles on these topics and is currently studying population trends in dementia prevalence, and the relationship of common cardiovascular risk factors, as well as acute illnesses such as sepsis and stroke, to cognitive decline and dementia. Dr. Langa has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge, the World Health Organization, the University of California-San Francisco, the University of New South Wales, and the University of Otago where he continued work on cross-national comparisons of the epidemiology and outcomes of dementia in countries around the world.