In 1984, the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego) was selected as one of the original five national Alzheimer’s disease research centers by the National Institute on Aging.

Today, the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (SMADRC) is in the Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego. The Center is one of 33 university-based sites funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA) to collect and contribute data to the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) to faciliate collaborative research.