Parkinson's Unity Walk Announces the Election of New Board President and Board Member

KINGSTON, N.J., May 11, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Parkinson's Unity Walk is pleased to announce that Robert Ubell has been elected President of the Board of Directors effective March 9, 2011. Mr. Ubell joined the Parkinson's Unity Walk Board in 2000. Both Ubell's step-father and brother, Earl Ubell, the noted CBS science journalist, suffered from Parkinson's disease. Robert Ubell is VP of Enterprise Learning at NYU Polytechnic Institute, where he heads the school's e-learning unit, in addition to its corporate training division, Enterprise Learning.

In his publishing career, Mr. Ubell was editor of the National Magazine Award-winning monthly, The Sciences, and American publisher of the premier British science weekly, Nature. He is the author or editor of six books and nearly 60 scholarly articles. His latest work, Virtual Teamwork, was published last year. In his career, Mr. Ubell has served on numerous corporate and nonprofit boards, including the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and National Research Council. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Sloan Consortium. He received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College and has been a guest lecturer at MIT and Columbia's College of Physicians & Surgeons.

Parkinson's Unity Walk also welcomes Dr. Robert Burke as a new member of the Board. For the past several years, he has provided scientific expertise and knowledge of Parkinson's research to the Board. Dr. Burke obtained his MD from Cornell Medical School and received training in Neurology at Columbia University Medical Center. He obtained postdoctoral training in Clinical Movement Disorders with Dr. Stanley Fahn, and training in Molecular Neurobiology with Dr. Tong Joh. He was appointed Assistant Professor of Neurology at Columbia in 1982 and is now the Alfred and Minnie Bressler Professor of Neurology and Pathology. Currently, he serves as Director of Laboratory Research in Parkinson's Disease and Related Disorders in the Department of Neurology and  Director of the Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research at Columbia. One of the founding Officers of the Movement Disorder Society and a founding member of the Editorial Board of Movement Disorders, he has served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Parkinson Study Group, The Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, National Parkinson Foundation and The Michael J. Fox Foundation. His current research interests relate to the molecular basis of programmed cell death and axon degeneration in dopamine neurons.

Martin Tuchman, Chairman of the Parkinson's Unity Walk, praising these recent changes to the Board, commented, "We need leaders who will help guide the Parkinson's Unity Walk as it continues to grow and its impact increases. Both Bob Ubell and Bob Burke bring an extraordinary commitment to finding a cure for Parkinson's disease. We are grateful to have them on our team."

The Parkinson's Unity Walk, held each April in New York's Central Park, is the largest grassroots fundraiser for Parkinson's disease research in the country. Over the last seventeen years, the Walk has grown from 200 participants raising $16,000 to more than 10,000 participants, raising $1.5M this year and more than $14M since it was first held in 1994. One hundred percent of individual donations go directly to Parkinson's research, benefiting seven major U.S. Parkinson's foundations.

More information about the Parkinson's Unity Walk is available at www.unitywalk.org.  

Contact: Helaine Isaacs
Parkinson Alliance
1-800-579-8440
[email protected]

SOURCE Parkinson's Unity Walk