The Association is pleased to continue on the tradition of supporting bright, young scientists in ALS research through the Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. This year, we are supporting six new postdoctoral fellows out of a highly competitive applicant pool. In this series, we highlight the dedication and unique contribution each fellow makes to ALS research. Today, we feature Dr. Tiffany Todd from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Association is pleased to continue on the tradition of supporting bright, young scientists in ALS research through the Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. This year, we are supporting six new postdoctoral fellows out of a highly competitive applicant pool. In this series, we highlight the dedication and unique contribution each fellow makes to ALS research. Today, we feature Dr. Sergey Stavisky from Stanford University.

There is a need to continue to educate Members of Congress about ALS and its true impact on people living with ALS and their loved ones. This is where you and your voice come in. Advocates – people living with ALS, their families, friends, doctors and researchers – successfully sharing their stories with members of Congress will result in more legislative victories.

In preparation for this week’s ALS Association Advocacy Fly-In in Washington D.C., we are giving a preview of our 2017 legislative priorities. Here we focus on the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act, which was introduced last week in the Senate and United States House of Representatives (S.379/H.R.1171).

ALS is characterized by the progressive loss of motor neurons – both upper motor neurons (UMNs) and lower motor neurons (LMNs). Within the ALS scientific community there has been a debate how UMNs and LMNs contribute to disease. Dr. Ozdinler and team from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago recently published a paper in Scientific Reports, a high impact journal published by Nature, further solidifying the important contribution of UMNs to disease specifically in people living with ALS. The ALS Association is pleased to support Dr. Ozdinler’s studies that contributed to this important paper.

In January, CEO and President Barb Newhouse hosted a Listening Tour with Association staff leaders, BOT Chairman Doug Butcher and Bill Thoet, former BOT Chairman and current Chairman of The Association’s Research Committee.

The ALS Association’s annual Leadership Conference earlier this month brought together leaders from all 39 chapters across the country in Irvine, Calif., to share ideas and collaborate. At this year’s conference, we were pleased to honor several heroes who are living with ALS and who have provided great inspiration to all those around them.

In the January 9th issue of Neurotherapeutics, Dr. Richard Smith, Director of the Center for Neurologic Study in La Jolla, Calif. published promising results of a phase II trial testing the effect of Nuedexta on bulbar function. Overall, he and his co-authors found that Nuedexta had a significant palliative effect on speech, swallowing and salivation in people living with ALS. The ALS Association contributed to the funding of this trial.

The men’s basketball coaching staffs of Duke University and the University of North Carolina are wearing ALS Association lapel pins tonight in honor of Jeff Capel, Jr., who was recently diagnosed with ALS. Capel was the head coach at Old Dominion University for seven seasons and also served as an assistant for the Charlotte Bobcats and the Philadelphia 76ers. His son, Jeff, is an assistant on Duke’s staff, and his son, Jason, played at UNC and now is an announcer on the ACC Network.

During The ALS Association’s annual Leadership Conference in Irvine, Calif., The Association came together to honor the Barnett family, who have contributed over $11 million to The ALS Association since it was founded. Lawrence Barnett was the founding chairman of The Association. To solidify the family’s place in Association history, it was announced that the TREAT ALSTM drug development program will be named “The Lawrence and Isabel Barnett Drug Development Program.”

Over the last year and a half, The ALS Association has been working with authors from Association Chapters, ALS centers and clinics and other ALS organizations to rewrite the original Living with ALS manual series, adding new and relevant content. The series has been developed for people living with ALS, family members, caregivers and other healthcare professionals, as well as our chapter and national staff.

Evy Reviers serves as the CEO of ALS Liga, our sister organization in Belgium and is a champion in ALS patient advocacy and care. She and her organization stepped up to partner with Dr. Desain and his team that develops NoiseTag brain computer interface (BCI), who won the ALS Assistive Technology Challenge in Dublin this past December. Through this collaboration, patients in Belgium will be able to try out the NoiseTag BCI to optimize its function and usability, thereby making it the best product possible.

A type of assistive technology, called brain computer interface (BCI), has been around for years with much room for improvement. We sat down with the 2016 ALS Assistive Technology Challenge winner, Dr. Peter Desain from Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behavior in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, who invented NoiseTag BCI that gives a novel spin on BCI technology.

Former Tennessee Titans linebacker Tim Shaw’s unexpected diagnosis of ALS doesn’t stop him from finding hope and advocating on behalf of those faced with ALS. He has also been an incredible ally of The ALS Association in fighting this disease.

After over a year in the making, the ALS Assistive Technology Challenge came to its culmination at the finale event during the ALS/MND International Alliance Meeting in Dublin. All five finalist teams came together to show off their prototypes to our esteemed judging team.

The CReATe Consortium is an ALS Association supported strategic initiative dedicated to the discovery and validation of ALS biomarkers and understanding the relationship between the clinical presentation and genetic background of people living with ALS.

In 2016, a significant number of ALS research discoveries, advances in clinical trials, collaborations and strategic initiatives all accelerated the pace of discovery in finding treatments and a cure for ALS.

Earlier this month, The ALS Association was happy to travel to Dublin to participate in the 27th International Symposium on ALS/MND. The Symposium, the largest ever, brought together top ALS researchers and clinicians from all over the world. People in attendance, including those from The ALS Association, used the hashtag #alssymp during the event. Here are some of our favorites!

After over a year in the making, The ALS Association in partnership with Prize4Life awarded the ALS Assistive Technology prize in Dublin during the ALS/MND International Alliance Meeting. We are thrilled to award one of the top prizes to Dexter Ang and David Cipoletta, two young entrepreneurs that founded Pison Technology based out of Massachusetts. They blew the judges away with their easy-to-use, self-contained communication system based on muscle EMG signals.

You may have heard that IBM's supercomputer, Watson, competed on Jeopardy! and is now being used to solve everything from business problems to diagnosing cancer. Today, we were thrilled to hear the latest Watson news: Working with a team at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, headed by Dr. Robert Bowser, Watson helped researchers discover 5 new ALS genes.