Sara B. Pillay

Sara B. Pillay, PhD, ABPP, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW), specializing in neurology and neuropsychology. She holds leadership roles as Co-Director of the Intensive Program for Aphasia Therapy and is affiliated with the Neuroscience Research Center and Wisconsin Institute of NeuroScience (WINS). Her research focuses on language reorganization post-stroke, aphasia therapy, and brain mapping using neuroimaging and electrophysiological techniques.

Dr. Pillay's clinical expertise includes aphasia, brain mapping, electrocorticography, and neuropsychological testing. She has contributed to advancements in understanding acoustic-phonetic perception deficits and developing language paradigms for intraoperative stimulation mapping. Her work bridges basic neuroscience with clinical applications, particularly in stroke rehabilitation and neurodegenerative diseases.

She is an active member of the Southeastern Wisconsin Stroke Rehabilitation Center and collaborates on translational research through the Language Imaging Laboratory. Her publications emphasize lesion-deficit mapping, cognitive outcomes after epilepsy surgery, and neural mechanisms of speech processing.