About Us

Welcome to the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford.

The Department has been a center of excellence for over four decades and includes over 125 faculty members serving through the School of Medicine and four outstanding teaching hospitals. These include Stanford Hospital & Clinics and the adjacent Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, each of which is undergoing major expansion and transformation with the building of new adult and children’s hospitals. The Palo Alto VA is one of the most modern, comprehensive and academic VA medical centers in the country and hosts many national clinical and academic programs and is continuing to add major research and academic capabilities. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is second highest volume county hospital in California after USC-LA County serving a diverse spectrum of patients with a vast array of disorders. The ongoing population growth in Northern California and the Bay Area along with the technology and economic leadership of Silicon Valley continues to support the robust development of our four partnering medical centers.

Clinical services are offered by a full spectrum of divisions and programs within the Department including: general neurology, epilepsy, stroke and neurocritical care, movement disorders, memory disorders, neuro-immunology-multiple sclerosis, neuromuscular disease, neuro-oncology, headache, autonomic disorders and intraoperative monitoring. Our child neurology division is the largest on the West Coast. The Department provides care and consultative services to a large numbers of patients referred from throughout United States, and many patients from the Pacific Rim and other international locations. Particularly important themes within our clinical services include the monitoring and promotion of clinical quality and optimal outcomes, and the use of multidisciplinary rounds for challenging cases.

Our educational programs offer outstanding, high volume-based residency training in adult and child neurology and post-residency fellowship training in most neurological subspecialties. Many current faculty members are international leaders in their field. Our education programs optimize training by executing a model of medium-sized cohorts of residents and fellows working very closely with faculty mentors in the setting of a rigorous clinical environment. The School of Medicine offers nationally recognized training for house staff that allows them to develop their own teaching and mentorship skills. Included among the Department’s former trainees and faculty are many department chairs and other leaders in American neurology. Resident research tracks, combined with rigorous clinical training, are high priorities.

Research in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences covers a wide range of multidisciplinary programs ranging from basic neuroscience studies, preclinical studies and clinical trials. In addition, Stanford University is well known for its outstanding, high impact neuroscience community consisting of some 400 faculty including many international leaders in multiple areas of neuroscience. The School of Medicine is fortunate to be one of the 25% of medical schools located on a main university campus – in our case we are fortunate that the campus is one of the top in the world. This combination of neuroscience critical mass, high caliber research and direct, readily available interactions across a large range of campus disciplines makes possible a truly exceptional milieu for neurological research. Our location at the center of the largest technology and biotechnology hub in the United States is yet another substantial resource in our research environment. Along with an extensive and vigorous clinical experience, our residency program includes two research tracks including an NIH R25 program that allow our trainees to fully leverage this remarkable research setting. The recent opening of the Jill and John Friedenrich Center for Translational Research provides an important platform for the Department’s rapidly expanding clinical trial programs.

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