Ann McKee, MD is the chief neuropathologist for the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) and the Boston University-based Centenarian Study, where ongoing surveillance of the FHS and centenarian participants will determine the incidence and type of dementia in persons in the ninth through the eleventh decades of life. She is also the chief neuropathologist for the Boston-based Veterans Administration Medical Centers and for the Sports Legacy Institute.
Dr. McKee’s research interests center on the neuropathological alterations associated with neurodegenerative diseases, with a primary focus on the earliest cortical abnormalities of Alzheimer's disease and on the interactions between acquired injuries and neurodegeneration. Her work is centered on the role of ischemic injury in triggering the onset of Alzheimer's disease and on how repetitive traumatic injury instigates a progressive degenerative tauopathy.
Dr. McKee completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin and received her medical degree from the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine. She completed residency training in neurology at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital and fellowship training in neuropathology at Massachusetts General Hospital. She was Assistant Professor of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School from 1991-94, when she became Associate Professor of Neurology and Pathology at Boston University School of Medicine. Dr. McKee has served as Director of the Neuropathology Core of the BU ADCC since its inception in 1996.