Dr. Leah Acker is an assistant professor in Anesthesiology, a neuro-anesthesiologist, and a graduate faculty member in Neurobiology and Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University. She holds a PhD in Medical Engineering and Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where her thesis won the MIT Friends of the McGovern Institute Prize for Brain Research in 2014. After completing medical school, residency, and neuro-anesthesia training at Duke, she joined the faculty in 2022. As the principal investigator of the ACkER Lab, Dr. Acker and her team study perioperopative cognitive resilience with techniques such as electroencephalography, neuromodulation, evoked potentials, and functional magnetic resonance imaging. Dr Acker currently holds two NIH R-level grants and funding from SNACC and FAER. She was recognized as a 2022 Duke Strong Start Award recipient, an American Geriatrics Society "Rising Star," and the SNACC Michenfelder New Investigator. In 2023, she received the American Delirium Society's New Investigator Award. Dr Acker's research aims to translate basic neuroscience and engineering advances to the perioperative setting in order to advance perioperative cognitive resilience in older adults.
