image: The Simon family: Irwin Simon, Lucas Simon, Daryl Simon, Trevor Simon, Nicolette Simon, Matt Sandberg.
Credit: The Simon Family
The fourth annual Fork It Alzheimer’s event, hosted by Daryl and Irwin Simon in partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association, took place on July 12, raising funds for groundbreaking Alzheimer’s disease (AD) prevention efforts. During the event, the Simon family announced that the Fork It Fund, created in collaboration with their friend, Stacy Polley, and the Association, awarded $1 million to support a major initiative at the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute (Stevens INI) at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
More than 400 guests attended the event to support the importance of risk-reduction through accessible, science-backed brain health practices. Since its inception in 2019, the Fork It Fund has now contributed over $4 million toward AD prevention research initiatives and elevated public awareness about Alzheimer’s, a disease that impacts more than 7 million people in the U.S., according to the Alzheimer’s Association’s 2025 Facts and Figures report.
A centerpiece of the event was a video presentation by Stevens INI Director and Fork It-funded researcher Arthur W. Toga, Ph.D. Toga detailed the Fund’s support of the Global Alzheimer’s Association Interactive Network (GAAIN), a global data-sharing platform created at the Stevens INI intended to accelerate scientific discovery by making critical research data more accessible worldwide.
The first of its kind, GAAIN is a federated network connecting independently operated Alzheimer’s disease and dementia-related data repositories from around the world. GAAIN was created in 2015 to address the challenges of making data available and accessible while supporting and connecting researchers worldwide to accelerate AD research, including advancing treatments and prevention strategies.
“Big data has revolutionized how we approach scientific and medical challenges. Thanks to advances in computing and artificial intelligence, and the vast amount of data now available, we’re seeing incredible breakthroughs. But despite this progress, researchers often remain isolated, limited by access and usability barriers,” said Toga. “GAAIN changes that. It’s designed to be safe, accessible, and easy to use, with intuitive tools that enable scientists from many fields and skill levels to collaborate and explore data. The more we share and the more we engage, the faster we advance toward understanding and treating Alzheimer’s disease.”
Fork It Alzheimer’s founder, Daryl Simon said, “The Fork It Fund is proud to champion brilliant scientists who are reshaping the future of Alzheimer’s. Dr. Toga’s pioneering work on the GAAIN initiative is revolutionizing global research by connecting thousands of experts and accelerating breakthroughs across borders. At this transformative moment in Alzheimer’s science, investing in visionary research has never been more urgent, or more promising.”
GAAIN connects over 60 data partners from around the world, making more than 500,000 research participants' data available for search and analysis via a common interface. Recently, researchers used GAAIN to compare brain scans and memory decline across different groups of people from around the world. Their findings helped confirm that certain brain changes linked to Alzheimer’s disease show up consistently across various ethnicities and research studies. Scientists have also recently used GAAIN to compare brain scan data from two major Alzheimer’s studies and found reliable ways to measure harmful tau buildup in the brain. These measurements are now helping guide how new Alzheimer’s treatments are tested in clinical trials.
“We are incredibly grateful to Daryl and Irwin Simon for their continued commitment to advancing Alzheimer’s research,” said Toga, who is also provost professor of ophthalmology, neurology, psychiatry and the behavioral sciences, radiology, and engineering, and the Ghada Irani Chair in Neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine. “Their generous support helps us grow and sustain GAAIN’s global infrastructure, ensuring that scientists around the world can securely share data, test new hypotheses, and make discoveries that would be impossible in isolation. This gift is vital—not only to the success of our mission, but to the future of how we detect, prevent, and treat Alzheimer’s disease.”