Mario Masellis
Dr. Masellis obtained his MSc in Pharmacology from the University of Toronto in 1997, completed his medical training at the University of Toronto in 2001 and obtained his board certification in Neurology in 2006. He completed a clinical research fellowship in Cognitive & Movement Disorders Neurology in 2008 and obtained a PhD in Clinical Neurosciences in 2012. His clinical expertise is in the diagnosis and management of both Alzheimer’s and non-Alzheimer’s dementias, including Lewy body disorders, frontotemporal dementia, progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal syndrome.
His research focuses on how genomic factors impact neuroimaging and cognitive phenotypes, as well as response to drugs in neurodegenerative diseases. His work has been published in high impact journals including Brain, Neurology, Lancet Neurology, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, and Alzheimer’s & Dementia. He was the co-lead of the Ontario Neurodegenerative Disease Research Initiative and he currently co-leads the Theme 2 of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging. He serves as a member of the International Parkinson’s and Movement Disorders Society Neuroimaging Study Group, and International Dementia with Lewy Bodies (DLB) Consortium. He is the Canadian national principal investigator of the Genetic Frontotemporal Dementia Initiative (GENFI) and oversees the conduct of this project in Canada.
He has received several awards for his work including the Department of Medicine Junior Investigator Award in 2016, the Mid Career Investigator Prize in Research in Aging from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Institute of Aging in 2021, and the Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Science (2012-2017). He has also recently received over 1 million Euros for a Joint Program in Neurodegenerative Disease (JPND) grant as coordinating international investigator.
Dr. Masellis has published >300 peer-reviewed articles, with 14,107 total citations, and an h-index of 59 (Scopus). He is the head of the Department of Medicine practice plan and research lead for neurology at the University of Toronto.