Elan D. Louis, M.D., M.Sc.
Linda and Mitch Hart Distinguished Chair in Neurology
Chair, Department of Neurology
Professor of Neurology and Epidemiology
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Dr. Elan Louis is an internationally recognized clinician-scientist, with expertise in age-related and degenerative diseases of the motor system, particularly the tremor disorders. He is the Linda and Mitch Hart Distinguished Chair in Neurology, and the Chair of the Department of Neurology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Tremor and Other Hyperkinetic Movements and editor of the 13th, 14th, and 15th(currently in process) editions of Merritt’s Textbook of Neurology. Dr. Louis earned his B.A. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and his medical degree from Yale University. He completed residency training in neurology at the Neurological Institute of New York, Columbia University. This was followed by a combined fellowship in movement disorders and neuroepidemiology at Columbia University, during which time he earned a master’s degree in epidemiology. For nineteen years, he was a member of, and eventual vice chair of the Department of Neurology at Columbia University (from 1995 – 2014) before being recruited to Yale in 2015 as Chief of the Movement Disorders Division. He was recruited to UT Southwestern in 2020 and, over the past four years, has overseen a quadrupling in NIH funding in his department. As a PI, Dr. Louis has obtained continuous funding from NINDS since 1995, having authored more than 700 original peer-reviewed manuscripts during this time. Drawing on his epidemiological training, one sphere of his research involves the careful assembly of clinical cohorts as well as population-based samples of patients, focusing on the clinical attributes, clinical definition and diagnosis, epidemiology and genetics of tremor disorders. His second sphere of research is laboratory-based. In 2003, he established the Essential Tremor Centralized Brain Repository, now having harvested more than 250 brains, and through work at both Columbia University (ongoing) and UT Southwestern, has published seminal studies elucidating the underlying pathophysiology of essential tremor. His work on essential tremor has been cited in the New York Times as “pioneering,” and has challenged many of the prevailing notions about essential tremor and has substantially recreated the dialogue in the field of movement disorders. Most important however, is that, delighted by his work, his wife often exclaims, “Go little Louie, go!”
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