Steven L. Small

Steven L. Small is a Professor of Neurology and Ashbel Smith Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he serves as Dean of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. His leadership focuses on expanding neuroscience research, strengthening partnerships with institutions like the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, and advancing the university's status as a top-tier research institution.

Dr. Small's research pioneers the understanding of human brain anatomy and physiology, particularly in language comprehension/production and distributed brain networks. His translational work explores language recovery after stroke through imitation-based therapies, emphasizing neurobiologically plausible models derived from primate auditory systems. He has published extensively on network-level neurology, developmental plasticity, and biomarker discovery in neurotrauma.

His recent publications (2020-2025) span topics including central autonomic network alterations in sports impact, salience network development, neurofilament biomarkers, and precision neurology. These works demonstrate interdisciplinary focus in neuroimaging, developmental neuroscience, and clinical neurorehabilitation.

Dr. Small founded the Society for the Neurobiology of Language and co-founded the MIT Press open access journal Neurobiology of Language. He previously served as Chair of Neurology at the University of California, Irvine (2010-2017) and established Chicago's first high-field MRI research center at the University of Chicago (1999). He maintains affiliations with the Department of Neurology at UT Dallas and Department of Neuroscience at UT Southwestern.