The Summer Institute of the Martha's Vineyard Hebrew Center begins its season next week on Thursday, July 10, with Rudolph Tanzi, the world’s leading expert on research into Alzheimer's. The talk begins at 7:30 p.m.

Dr. Tanzi holds the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Neurology and Mental Retardation at Harvard University and for more than 30 years his research has focused on Alzheimer’s disease. He has helped discover all three genes now known to be associated with early-onset familial Alzheimer’s.

Doors open at 7 p.m. and admission is $20.

Other speakers this summer include landscape architect Michael Van Valkenburgh, Charles Ogletree, the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, and Ezra Feivel Vogel, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences Emeritus at Harvard University and one of the nation’s leading scholars on Japan and China. For a complete list of speakers visit mvsummerinstitute.com/speakers.

The Summer Institute also screens films each Sunday at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center in Vineyard Haven. The first film to be shown on July 6 at 7:30 p.m. will be Hanna’s Journey. The movie is about a young German woman traveling to Israel to work with mentally challenged adults and to visit a Holocaust survivor. For a complete list of summer films, visit mvsummerinstitute.com/films.