The following message was sent on Monday, Dec. 9, by YSM Dean Nancy Brown, MD, and YNHHS President Pamela Sutton-Wallace, MPH.
To the YSM and YNHHS Communities:
We are pleased to announce that Pooja Khatri, MD, MS, has accepted the position of chair of the Department of Neurology and chief of neurology at Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale New Haven Health System, effective April 1, 2025.
Currently, Dr. Khatri is professor of neurology and rehabilitation medicine and vice chair of research within the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC) College of Medicine. She is also associate director for clinical research of the Stroke Center of Excellence at the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute. Since joining UC in 2004, she has held additional roles as director of the Vascular Neurology Division and director of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Stroke team, serving a tristate area of 2.5 million people. Since 2013, Dr. Khatri has also co-directed the National Coordinating Center of National Institutes of Health (NIH) StrokeNet, the primary infrastructure for multicenter trials of stroke funded by NIH, harnessing the leadership and experience of the stroke field to efficiently develop and implement studies spanning prevention, treatment, and recovery.
With 20 years of sustained NIH and industry funding, Dr. Khatri’s contributions have encompassed acute stroke therapy, prevention of early stroke recurrence, radiological biomarker development, and clinical trial design. She demonstrated the time-dependence of endovascular therapy to improve clinical outcomes after stroke. Her research showing that IV thrombolysis is unlikely to be effective for mild, nondisabling stroke has led to changes in clinical guidelines. Her current NIH-funded research includes the first platform trial in stroke, a dose-finding trial for a novel clot dissolving monoclonal antibody, an acute biomarker validation study for stroke motor recovery, and characterization of population-level radiological brain health in stroke patients. She also leads an investigator-initiated, industry-funded trial of endovascular therapy for patients with reduced stroke severity. With almost 300 publications, Dr. Khatri was recently identified among the Top 1% of Highly Cited Researchers in the World by Clarivate (Web of Science). She also has broad expertise and experience in drug and device therapeutic development from conception to post-marketing phases, including translational, study design, regulatory, safety, and ethical aspects.
Recognizing her well-established track record of training and mentorship, Dr. Khatri has received several teaching awards, including the UC Provost Faculty-to-Faculty Research Mentoring Award and the Middle East & North Africa Stroke Organization (MENASO) Education Award. In addition to mentoring trainees and faculty, she is a long-standing member of the annual NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) Clinical Trials Methods Course where she guides participants through the development of their first clinical trials. She also provides ongoing educational programs and training within her community and around the world, most recently in Asia where she taught at a stroke summer school that included a World Health Organization (WHO) delegation of physicians from low- and middle-income countries.
An internationally recognized expert in clinical stroke, Dr. Khatri has held leadership roles on the World Stroke Organization (WSO) Executive Committee, the Stroke Council of the American Heart Association (AHA), and the European Stroke Organisation’s (ESO) Guidelines Board, and she has been a member of the American Academy of Neurology and the Society for Clinical Trials. She has also served as associate editor of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Stroke Journal and Frontiers in Stroke and as a member of the editorial boards for the Journal of American Medicine (JAMA) Neurology, Journal of Stroke Medicine (Indian Stroke Association), Neurological Research and Practice (German Neurological Society), and International Journal of Stroke.
Dr. Khatri earned a bachelor of science with honors in biological sciences from Stanford University and a medical degree with honors from University of Illinois at Chicago. She completed an internship and neurology residency at University of Pennsylvania and a vascular neurology fellowship at University of Cincinnati through the NIH Specialized Program of Translational Research in Acute Stroke. She also earned a master of science in clinical epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health.
We want to thank David Hafler, MD, for his leadership of the outstanding department of Neurology over his 15 years as chair and his continued service as chair while we conducted the search for this role. We are also grateful to the search committee, which was chaired by Murat Günel, MD, and included Nii Addy, PhD; Marcelo de Oliveira Dietrich, MD, PhD; Kristen Harris Nwanyanwu, MD, MBA, MHS; Katherine Heilpern, MD; John Krystal, MD; Maxwell Laurans, MD, MBA; Lisa Leffert, MD; James McPartland, PhD; Laura Ment, MD; Stefania Nicoli, PhD; Anna Christina (Kia) Nobre, PhD; and Lynn Tanoue, MD, MBA.
Please join us in congratulating Dr. Khatri and welcoming her to Yale and Yale New Haven Health.
Sincerely,
Nancy J. Brown, MD
Jean and David W. Wallace Dean of Medicine
C.N.H. Long Professor of Internal Medicine
Pamela M. Sutton-Wallace, MPH
President, Yale New Haven Health