Dr. Beverly “Gwen” Windham, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Geriatrics, has received the Richard L. Summers Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Research Award. This award is given annually to one faculty member at UMMC with an exceptional career in clinical research. Dr. Windham received her undergraduate degree from the University of Mississippi and a Doctor of Medicine degree followed by internal medicine residency from UMMC. She also received a Master of Health Science degree in Epidemiology and Biostatistics of Aging from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and completed a dual Clinical and Research Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University Health System in geriatric medicine. Following fellowship, Dr. Windham spent six years as a clinical scientist at the National Institute on Aging, a Division of the National Institutes of Health where her research focus was to identify and intervene upon modifiable risk factors for cognitive and physical dysfunction in older persons. She has been at UMMC since 2009 and serves as Director of the MIND Center’s Neuroepidemiology Research Core.

Dr. Windham has more than 20 years’ experience in geriatric medicine and caring for patients with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Her research has focused on the role of obesity, cardiovascular risk factors, and inflammation as potentially modifiable factors related to healthy aging and dementia. Dr. Windham is co-principal investigator for the UMMC MIND Center-Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, site principal investigator of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Neurocognitive study and the Mark VCID Consortium, and co-investigator on multiple other longitudinal cohort studies on aging.