Nicolas G. Bazan is the founding Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health New Orleans, the inaugural founder of the Ernest C. and Yvette C. Villere Chair for Research in Retinal Degeneration, and has been appointed to the highest academic rank in the LSU System—Boyd Professor. He is also a Foreign Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience at the Karolinska Institutet,Sweden. “A true Renaissance man,” Dr. Bazan is an innovative scientist, effective mentor, community leader, creative author, arts patron, entrepreneur, and transformative influencer in implementing a knowledge-based local economy. His pioneering research continuous open conceptual in-roads in neuroscience, ophthalmology, and medicine by uncovering signaling mechanisms and novel molecular principles of successful aging, cell survival, and neuroprotection in stroke, traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative diseases as part of his ongoing quest to contribute to a challenge to civilization: the growing incidence of the loss of cognition and of sight.. He has served on advisory committees for NIH and study sections, Senate founding member (2009-) of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) program in der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, Germany. He is also author of Una Vida: A Fable of Music and the Mind (Screenplay Co-writer and Executive Producer of feature film Of Mind and Music) and The Dark Madonna: A Fable of Resiliency and Imagination – novels exploring his lifelong intellectual quest to understand the deep beauty and complexity of brain function and the human experience. At the same time, he aims to remove the stigma surrounding Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.