Richman Family Professorship for Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases

School of Medicine

Established in 2009 by Alison and Arnold Richman

ALISON RICHMAN, an adoption social worker for Jewish Community Services, and ARNOLD RICHMAN, a partner at the Shelter Group, LLC, a Baltimore-based national real estate development firm that, among other activities, develops and manages senior housing and assisted living retirement communities, have dedicated their lives to participating in and building community. From raising their three daughters, working in careers that enrich the lives of others, and contributing time and money to causes they believe in, Alison and Arnie Richman are models of making positive change in the world.

Alison is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Social Work and sits on their board of advisors. Along with Arnie, they established an endowed scholarship at the school to benefit MSW students in families and children specializations. She is also a member of the board at Temple Oheb Shalom Learning Ladder.

Prior to his work at The Shelter Group, Arnie was a partner at Meridian Healthcare for 26 years. It was through Meridian’s involvement in nursing home care that introduced Arnie to Johns Hopkins and to faculty members in the Department of Psychiatry. Arnie currently serves as a trustee of Johns Hopkins Medicine as well as on the Baltimore Community Foundation Board of Trustees. He is also a board director at the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies as well as the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Arnie is a founding member of the Department of Psychiatry’s Advisory Board where his inspired leadership contributes to both the board and the department’s direction and success.

Held by Gwenn Smith

smith-gwenn Dr. GWENN SMITH is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She also serves as the Director of the Johns Hopkins Division of Geriatric and Neuropsychiatry. She received her BA in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and her PhD in neuropsychology at the City University of New York. She completed post-doctoral training at the Aging and Dementia Research Center, Department of Psychiatry, New York University (NYU) and the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Program, Brookhaven National Laboratory. She was involved in the early development of neuroimaging biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease using PET and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

For the past twenty years, her research has focused on developing and applying novel neuroimaging methods to understand the neurochemical basis of Alzheimer’s disease and psychiatric disorders in late life and of the mechanisms underlying treatment response to medication and brain stimulation. These studies have focused on identifying the earliest neurochemical changes that are associated with the behavioral symptoms that precede memory impairment in Alzheimer’s disease that will inform development of more effective prevention and treatment strategies, as well as biomarkers of treatment response. She is actively involved in research training activities in geriatric mental health supported by the National Institute of Health. She is a fellow of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) and the Collegium Internationale Neuropsychopharmacologicum (CINP) and a founding member and past president of the International College of Geriatric Psychoneuropharmacology (ICGP).