Draft:John F. Crary

John F. Crary, MD-PhD (born 1973) is an American neuropathologist and experimental neurobiologist. He is a full professor with tenure at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he founded and co-directs the Neuropathology Brain Bank & Research CoRE.

Early life and education
John F. Crary was born in New York City and raised in Brooklyn. He attended Saint Ann's School. His father, Calvert D. Crary, was a Wall Street analyst specializing in litigation and biotechnology. Crary pursued his undergraduate studies at Brown University, majoring in neuroscience.

Career
Crary underwent his MD-PhD training at SUNY Downstate graduating in 2006 as a commencement speaker at Carnegie Hall. His thesis work focused on PKMzeta in Alzheimer's disease under the mentorship of two leading neuroscientists: Dr. Todd Sacktor, MD, known for his discovery of PKMzeta, and Suzanne Mirra, MD who devised the CERAD criteria for the neuropathological diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease. He completed his anatomical and neuropathology residency and fellowship at Columbia University, where he was mentored by Michael Shelanski, MD-PhD. There, he studied "tangle-only" dementia which led to the characterization of primary age-related tauopathy (PART), which received some attention at the time. The proposal that PART is a unique subgroup of dementia patients distinct from Alzheimer's Disease was highly controversial, and still remains a highly researched topic. The original description of PART has now been cited 1323 times as of May of 2024 according to Google Scholar.

In 2014, Crary moved to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, establishing a new laboratory and brain bank focused on movement disorders and chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Crary is a frequent invited lecturer at various institutions including the New York Academy of the Sciences, the American Association of Neuropathologists, and others.

Research and contributions to diagnostic neuropathology
Dr. Crary has led efforts to define post-mortem diagnostic criteria for various tauopathies. This includes primary age-related tauopathy, aging-related tau astrogliopathy, chronic traumatic encephalopathy,  and progressive supranuclear palsy. He also contributed substantially to understanding the neurological consequences of neuroinfectious diseases such as HIV and SARS-CoV-2.

His genetic studies of on PART and PSP have received considerable attention.

Digital neuropathology and machine learning
Crary was the first to apply artificial intelligence / machine learning techniques to the histomorphological assessment of neurodegeneration in human brain digital whole slide images of autopsy brain tissues. He has pioneered the use of convolutional neural networks for analyzing whole slide images from dementia patients. Dr. Crary developed an AI/ML algorithm capable of obtaining a pre-mortem tissue diagnosis of Parkinson's disease. Dr. Crary's team was the first to apply convolutional neural networks to assessing tau pathology. The Crary lab showed that deep learning algorithms can predict cognitive function. Using multiple instance learning, Dr. Crary's team developed an approach to measuring brain aging, termed HistoAge, an approach that may help advancing our understanding of age-acceleration.

Awards and recognition
He is an editor of Acta Neuropathologica and Free Neuropathology.