Derek B. Archer, PhD

Dr. Derek Archer is a neuroscientist and an Assistant Professor of Neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. His research interests focus on the intersection of neuroimaging and computational genetics, with the goal of identifying which genetic biomarkers are associated with neurodegenerative disease. He is specifically interested in what genetic susceptibility exists towards white matter neurodegeneration in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Archer is a co-investigator with the Vanderbilt Memory and Aging Project and the Vanderbilt Alzheimer's Disease Research Center. He completed his doctoral degree in biobehavioral science at the University of Florida in 2016 and was funded by a Parkinson's Foundation postdoctoral fellowship until 2019. In 2019, Dr. Archer joined the VUMC faculty. In 2021, he received a Career Development Award from the National Institute on Aging, which focuses on genetic risk towards white matter neurodegeneration in the medial temporal lobe tracts. Over the last two years, he has been working to harmonize multi-site MRI data to facilitate large-scale imaging genetic studies.