Dr. Bubu is an Assistant Professor and physician scientist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, in the Departments of Psychiatry and Population Health, with a highly impactful programmatic research focus on sleep, aging and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in blacks. He did his Ph.D. from University of South Florida and a postdoctoral fellow at NYU. Dr. Bubu was awarded an NIA funded Columbia Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Alzheimer’s disease Disparities Pilot grant to conduct original research on the interaction of obstructive sleep apnea and race on plasma tau, and neurofilament light protein. Dr. Bubu’s research focuses on examining how micro-and-macro architectural sleep changes, and vascular risk, impact AD risk in blacks. Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease with multifactorial risk factors. Recent evidence implicates disturbed sleep as an important risk factor. This presentation will include evidence implicating obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as a risk factor for AD, as a physiologic marker associated with AD pathology/biomarkers (i.e. amyloid and tau), and as a modifier of AD risk. Results from our recent study examining whether OSA has a direct neurotoxic effect that is independent of amyloid or tau, sufficient to induce a prospective clinical diagnosis of cognitive decline, and whether OSA’s indirect effect that promotes amyloid or tau accumulation, combine with OSA to act synergistically to significantly increase AD progression risk will be presented. OSA’s association with novel plasma AD biomarkers, race and sex specific mechanisms underlying OSA-AD risk as well as future research directions will also be discussed.