Associate Professor Simon Laws (BSc. PhD), is currently the leader of the Alzheimer's Disease Genomics Group at Edith Cowan University and the deputy Chief Scientific Officer of the Co-operative Research Centre for Mental Health. His research focuses on the utilisation of sophisticated high-throughput genotyping technologies in combination with quantitative phenotypes, to gain a physiological understanding of the underlying cognitive and pathological processes of AD. Currently he is investigating the role of rare genetic variants in AD as well as utilizing next-generation sequencing technologies to uncover new genes involved in both sporadic and inherited forms of the disease.