Lana Sargent is the Associate Dean of Practice and Community Engagement at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) School of Nursing, affiliate faculty at the School of Pharmacy’s Geriatric Pharmacotherapy Program, and Director of the Mobile Health and Wellness Program. She chairs the Virginia Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Commission and the Statewide Data and Research Group, leading efforts to release two statewide reports, Building a Dementia-Capable Virginia, which influenced the Virginia Legislature to increase dementia-related resources and funding. Dr. Sargent is recognized for her research on cognitive frailty, which explores the connection between physical frailty and cognitive decline. Her research identified the biological and clinical factors behind this phenomenon, at the National Institute on Aging's Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Diseases. Her innovations include developing an AI-assisted data method to improve biomedical research interoperability. Dr. Sargent’s epidemiologic findings support her clinical translational research, which aims to optimize physical health and medication efficacy to reduce the risk of dementia. When not conducting research or teaching, Dr. Sargent can be found seeing patients in the VCU Department of Geriatrics. Dr. Sargent holds a PhD from the Medical University of South Carolina and has completed postdoctoral education at the NIH/NIA in neurogenetics and bioinformatics.