Karen Ashe

Karen K. Hsiao Ashe is a professor at the Department of Neurology and Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota, where she holds the Edmund Wallace and Anne Marie Tulloch Chairs in Neurology and Neuroscience. She is Director of the Neurobiology of Alzheimer's Disease Research Laboratory at the University, and her specific research interest is memory loss resulting from Alzheimer's disease, and preventive care for the disease.[1] Her research has included the development of a line of genetically engineered mice that develop symptoms similar to Alzheimer's, the discovery of abnormal proteins that disrupt brain activity in the early stages of the disease, and the possibility of reversing memory loss due to the disease.[2]

Ashe graduated from St. Paul Academy and Summit School before graduating from Harvard University. She went on to earn an MD from Harvard and subsequently completed her PhD at MIT. She joined the University of Minnesota in 1992. She has also studied at the University of California, San Francisco.

She was awarded the Metlife Foundation Award for Medical Research in Alzheimer's Disease in 2005[3] and the Potamkin Prize in 2006, together with Karen Duff and Bradley Hyman.[4]