Gary Small, MD

Gary Small, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences and Parlow-Solomon Professor on Aging at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.  He is also Director of the Imaging and Biomarkers Core of the UCLA Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center Director, as well as Director of the UCLA Longevity Center and the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience & Human Behavior.

Dr. Small is co-inventor of the first brain imaging technology to detect the physical evidence of Alzheimer’s disease in living people, and his team’s research helped convince policy makers to expand healthcare insurance coverage for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease using brain PET scans.  In addition to testing medicines designed to treat or delay the onset of Alzheimer's, Dr. Small has developed healthy aging lifestyle and memory training programs that are available throughout the U.S. in senior centers, community hospitals, and assisted living facilities. 

Dr. Small was a phi beta kappa, summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and earned his medical degree (alpha omega alpha) at the University of Southern California.  After an internal medicine internship at Children’s Hospital and Adult Medical Center in San Francisco, he completed a psychiatry residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and a clinical fellowship at Harvard Medical School.  Dr. Small then completed a geriatric psychiatry fellowship at UCLA. 

Dr. Small has authored over 500 scientific works and received numerous awards and honors, including Senior Investigator Award, American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry, and the Jack Weinberg Award for Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry from the American Psychiatric Association.  Scientific American magazine named him one of the world’s top innovators in science and technology. 

Dr. Small’s discoveries have made the headlines of The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today, and he frequently appears on The Today Show, Good Morning America, PBS, and CNN.  Small has authored over 500 scientific works, as well as six popular books including The New York Times best-seller, The Memory Bible, and his forthcoming book, The Alzheimer’s Prevention Program (to be released January 2012).