Rutgers professor Dr. Mark Gluck, front row, left, with speakers from the conference on Alzheimer’s disease at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, a facility outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Photos courtesy Mark Gluck
June 26, 2008
A local neuroscientist has returned energized from an international conference in Israel whose participants sought to share developments about the detection, treatment, and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Mark Gluck — a professor and codirector of the Rutgers Memory Disorders Project based at Rutgers University’s Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience in Newark — organized the May 25-28 conference along with three colleagues in Israel and the West Bank; it was cohosted by Rutgers-Newark, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and Al-Quds University Medical School.
Gluck, a visiting scientist at Hebrew University, was one of over 50 scholars, scientists, and postdoctoral and doctoral students — who also hailed from the United States, Turkey, and Europe — who shared findings at the conference, Early Detection of Alzheimer’s Disease: Promoting Interdisciplinary and International Communication and Collaboration.
Not only did the gathering lead to the advancement of scientific understanding in the treatment of Alzheimer’s, it was a rare chance for Israeli and Palestinian scientists to collaborate.
“The turnout from the Palestinians exceeded expectations,” Gluck wrote NJ Jewish News in an e-mail. “We had over 20 Palestinians in attendance at the main scientific sessions in western Jerusalem (the Hebrew University component), including a dozen medical students from Al-Quds University in the West Bank, six faculty from Al-Quds, and five clinical neurologists, psychiatrists, and one brain surgeon from all over the West Bank, including Ramallah, Hebron, Bethlehem, and Jenin.”
Of these Palestinians, 14 were people for whom Hebrew University and Gluck arranged special two-day passes into Israel and western Jerusalem, involving a three-month effort and the permission of the Israel Defense Forces. Gluck said the rest of the Palestinians already had permission to enter because they either lived in eastern Jerusalem or had permits to work in hospitals in Israel. Gluck said he hired a bus that brought the students and faculty each day to the conference center from their West Bank campus.
Palestinian turnout
The Israelis, Gluck said, were very excited about the turnout. “Apparently for years they had been trying to get more Palestinian participation in Hebrew U. conferences and events and rarely got even one or two Palestinians, if that, to attend,” Gluck told NJJN. “This was the biggest and most substantial Palestinian involvement ever in a conference hosted by and at Hebrew University.”
The conference also took place in the West Bank itself, with the final day at Al-Quds. “Almost none of the international attendees or the Israelis had ever been in the West Bank,” Gluck said. “We had four talks at Al-Quds on regional issues in Alzheimer’s epidemiology and care with speakers from Israel, Turkey, West Bank/PA, and from a U.S.-Israel team studying Alzheimer’s in Israeli Arabs.” The sessions were followed by a lunch banquet and a tour of the Al-Quds Children’s Mathematics Museum.
Gluck with Palestinian students attending the conference
Gluck said that Illana Gozes, the incoming president of the Israeli Neuroscience Society, was so excited by both the scientific content of the meeting as well as the large participation by the Palestinians that she asked him if he would return in a year to the society’s annual conference in Eilat to organize and chair a special session on joint Israeli-Palestinian neuroscience initiatives.
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