The Buffalo Neuroimaging Analysis Center (BNAC) Advisory Council was formed in the spring of 2011 to provide guidance in addressing current challenges in neurological research, to help clarify directions for new research, and to provide education for those outside the neurological community about what BNAC’s research means to the understanding of multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases.
Linda Safran has over 30 years of senior level fundraising experience in staff and consulting positions. A graduate of the University of Michigan and the Goucher College Management Institute, Linda began her career in resource development at Johns Hopkins where she directed the hospital’s grateful patients program and had fundraising responsibility for five medical specialties before serving as the university's director of development for libraries. As a consultant, she has worked with many educational, healthcare, social services, and faith-based non-profit organizations. She has also served as a board member for Chesapeake Planned Giving Council and as a peer reviewer for over ten years for Maryland Nonprofits’ Standards of Excellence program.
A year after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Linda returned to her hometown of Buffalo, New York in 2010 to be BNAC's Director of Resource Development where, under her direction, BNAC raised $1 million for MS research. She moved to Portland, Oregon in 2014 where she continues her work with BNAC as a consultant. Drawing from her earliest work after college as a community development Peace Corps Volunteer, Linda helps Portland's Eastside Village become a vital and supportive network for seniors living independently
While MS has limited Linda in many ways, it has also trained her to be focused on her priorities. Assuring BNAC has the resources it needs to advance the understanding of multiple sclerosis is her top priority.
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Craig Walters is from Connecticut, and has been an avid sailboat racer for fifty years. Craig began designing and building sailboats at age 12. He earned a BSBA degree from Bucknell University, served as an Officer in the Army Corps of Engineers and was a yacht designer with Morgan Yachts, Sparkman & Stephens and firms of his own in Florida and Connecticut. From his interests in protecting the marine environment, Craig developed a series of electric and hybrid powered pleasure boats in the 1990’s and has written and lectured about yacht design. Craig was diagnosed with RRMS in 1970, now classified as Benign MS. He and his wife now live in Southwest Florida where they recently retired.
Michelle Brown, a magazine publisher, was diagnosed with MS in 1998. After 8 years of a benign course, she developed secondary progressive MS, and her mobility deteriorated within 2 years to leave her wheelchair-bound. She is an alumna of SUNY Albany with a degree in psychology and did postgraduate work in marketing at the University of Connecticut. Michelle read about extracranial venous abnormalities in early 2009 and became the first patient treated on the East Coast in December 2009. Shortly afterwards, she founded and incorporated the CCSVI Alliance. Michelle commutes by train to her New York City office several days each week where she works full-time. She resides in Greenwich, CT, with her husband, two daughters.
Larry Nolan and his wife, live in University City, Missouri. After 37 years as a software developer and product manager in the mechanical CAD/CAM/CAE industry, he is now a volunteer for The Nature Conservancy in Missouri. He has a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics from Missouri University of Science & Technology, M.Sc. in Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. Larry’s wife was diagnosed with RRMS in 2008 after her neurologist suspected this diagnosis in 2007.
Trevor Tucker has a PhD in Electronics Engineering from the University of British Columbia He is founder and President of Tactical Technologies Inc, a software simulation company in Ottawa, Canada. He is married, has a son, a daughter, and four grandsons. Trevor’s son was diagnosed with MS in 1998. He is an advocate of a multi-disciplinary approach to the solution to Multiple Sclerosis and has recently applied the physics of fluid dynamics to addressing the association of obstructed veins to MS.
