Gary Small M.D.

Gary Small, M.D., is a professor and chair of psychiatry at Hackensack University Medical Center. He oversees all professional and administrative activities within the behavioral health care transformation service at Hackensack Meridian Health and serves as chair of psychiatry at Hackensack University Medical Center. Prior to joining Hackensack Meridian Health, Small was a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, a Parlow-Solomon professor on aging at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, director of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, and director of the UCLA Longevity Center. Small is known for his public work in promoting the practice of psychiatry and innovative research on brain health, aging, and Alzheimer’s disease. He is a co-inventor of the first positron emission tomography (PET) scanning method that provides images in living people with Alzheimer’s disease with abnormal brain proteins, amyloid plaques, and tau tangles. In addition to testing compounds that may benefit cognitive abilities and possibly delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease symptoms, Small has studied and developed lifestyle and memory training programs for improving cognition and healthy aging. Small has authored more than 500 scientific publications and 12 books, including the international best-seller, The Memory Bible. Among his honors are the American Psychiatric Association’s Weinberg Award for Excellence in Geriatric Psychiatry and being named by Scientific American magazine as one of the world’s top 50 innovators in science and technology. He is a past president of the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry,