Administration

Stephen Waxman, MD, PhD , exemplifies the bridge between basic research and clinical medicine. He is the Bridget Marie Flaherty Professor of Neurology, Neurobiology, and Pharmacology at Yale University. He is the Director of the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research and the Center for Restoration of Nervous System Function, and has served as the Chairman of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine from 1986 to 2009.

Dr. Waxman received his BA from Harvard and his MD and PhD degrees (1970, 1972) from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following Neurology Residency at Boston City Hospital/Harvard Medical School (1972-75), he held faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School, MIT, and Stanford University, prior to moving to Yale in 1986. Dr. Waxman’s research has the goal of delineating the roles of sodium channels both in normal neuronal function, and in neuronal pathophysiology, and is aimed at developing new therapies for neurological disorders such as spinal cord injury, nerve injury, multiple sclerosis, and neuropathic pain.

Dr. Waxman has published more than 500 scientific papers, has authored the clinical text Spinal Cord Compression, and has edited seven books. He has served on the editorial boards of many journals including Brain, Annals of Neurology, Trends in Neurosciences, Nature Clinical Neurology, and Trends in Molecular Medicine, and he serves as Editor of the Journal of Physiology and as Editor-in-Chief of Neuroscience Letters. Dr. Waxman has trained more than one hundred and fifty academic neurologists and neuroscientists who work at institutions around the world.

A member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Waxman is an Established Investigator of the National MS Society. His many awards include the Tuve Award from NIH, the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the Reingold Award from the National MS Society, the Dystel Prize and the Wartenberg Award from the American Academy of Neurology, the William S. Middleton Award from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Julius Axelrod Prize from the Society for Neuroscience.

Jeffery D. Kocsis, PhD, Associate Director of the Center for Neuroscience and Regeneration Research, is also Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurobiology at Yale University School of Medicine and senior VA Medical Research Scientist. He is an expert in the field of axonal regeneration and remyelination, and on cell-based approaches to nerve injury repair. His research focuses on axonal pathophysiology in diseases and injuries of the central nervous system (CNS) and on transplantation based mechanisms to repair and protect the damaged CNS. Dr. Kocsis is the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Paralyzed Veterans of America Spinal Cord Research Foundation, and serves on numerous committees for the VA and NIH. Dr. Kocsis has authored more than 200 publications pertaining to his work. He received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University School of Medicine and carried out post-doctoral work in the Department of Neurology at the Harvard Medical School and the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.