Expertise United by Purpose

Leaders across medicine, neuroscience, law, and nonprofit governance help advance meaningful research.

Guided by Expertise

American Friends of ParkinsonFonds Deutschland is guided by a leadership team with complementary expertise in medicine, neuroscience, law, and nonprofit governance. Together, its members work to create the conditions in which pioneering research can reveal disease mechanisms, enable earlier and more accurate diagnosis, and lead to therapies that improve the lives of people affected by Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

Richard A. Schirtzer, Esq.

Director & President

Wolfgang H. Oertel, MD, PhD

Director

Fanni F. Geibl, MD, PhD

Clinician Scientist, PI, psychiatrist

Fanni Geibl earned her M.D. from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hunagry (2016), followed by a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from University of Marbugr, Germany (2019). She subsequently completed a postdoctoral tranining at Northwestern University in Chicago (2020-2021), where she further developed her expertise in circuit-based models of neurodegeneration.

Upon returning to Germany, she established the research group Cellular Neuropsychiatry while starting her clinical training in psychiatry. Currently, she practices as a psychiatrist in the specialized outpatient clinic for dementia and neurodegenerative disorders while leading her laboratory. As a Clinician Scientist, her work integrates mechanistic experimental neuroscience with patient-oriented clinical work, with particular focus on Lewy body dementia and related synucleinopathies.

Her laboratory investigates the cellular and network-level determinants of selective neuronal vulnerability and disease progression in synucleinopathies. Her research efforts center on mitochondrial bioenergetics, protein aggregation dynamics, neuroimmune interactions, and systemic modulators of pathology. By combining advanced in vivo disease models with direct clinical insight, her team seeks to define biologically grounded mechanisms that can inform vulnerability-targeted and disease-modifying therapeutic strategies for prodromal and manifest Lewy body disorders.

Fanni F. Geibl-Henrich, MD, PhD

Treasurer & CFO

Martin T. Henrich, M.D.

Clinican Scientist, PI, psychiatrist

Martin Henrich obtained his medical degree (M.D.) from the University in Marburg, Germany in 2019. During his medical studies, he developed a strong interest in neurobiological mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases and joined Northwestern University in Chicago as an undergraduate research scholar in 2017. He later returned as a postdoctoral fellow (2020-2021), supported by a competitive Flanagan Fellowship, where he expanded his expertise in circuit-based and in vivo models of Parkinson’s disease.

In 2021, he commenced his residency training in psychiatry while co-establishing the junior research group Cellular Neuropsychiatry at Marburg University. Within this framework, he plays a leading role in shaping the scientific direction of the group, integrating mechanistic experimental research with clinically driven questions in neurodegenerative disorders.

His research focuses on the pathophysiology in Parkinson’s disease, particularly on network-level dysfunction, selective neuronal vulnerability, and mechanisms governing disease progression. A defining feature of his work is the strong translational and reverse-translational orientation: clinical phenotypes and disease trajectories guide experimental model development, while insights from cellular and systems neuroscience are systematically translated back into clinically meaningful hypotheses. By bridging patient care, biomarker development, and mechanistic disease modeling, his work aims to advance biologically informed, disease modifying strategies in Parkinson’s disease and related neurodegenerative disorders.

Martin T. Henrich, MD

Secretary

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