معرفی
Tanya Simuni, MD, serves as Director of the Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders Center and Chief of Movement Disorders in the Department of Neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. She holds the endowed Arthur C. Nielsen, Jr., Research Professorship in Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders and leads multidisciplinary clinical and research initiatives focused on neurodegenerative diseases.
Her educational background includes an MD from Leningrad Medical School (1985), Neurology residency at Temple University Hospital (1994), fellowship training at Temple University Hospital (1995), and board certification in Neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.
Dr. Simuni's research centers on Parkinson's disease, specializing in disease modification clinical trials and biomarker validation. She actively investigates predictive models for motor and cognitive decline, develops decentralized trial methodologies, and explores α-synuclein pathology for disease staging. Her work bridges laboratory discoveries with clinical applications to improve early diagnosis and therapeutic interventions.
Recent publications demonstrate her leadership in advancing Parkinson's disease research through innovative trial designs and biomarker validation, while also contributing to Alzheimer's disease diagnostics with global health perspectives. Her work consistently emphasizes translational approaches to track disease progression.
Key honors include the William Langston Award (2017), Cures Within Reach Research Patient Impact Award (2014), and multiple John Kessler Teaching Awards (2006, 2003).
Dr. Simuni directs major clinical trials including TOPAZ (zoledronic acid for fracture prevention in PD) and PPMI 2.0 (deep phenotyping of PD cohorts), supported by multimillion-dollar grants from The Michael J. Fox Foundation. She chairs multiple international consortia including the Parkinson Study Group and serves on the Executive Steering Committee of the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
She leads Northwestern's Movement Disorders Center and coordinates global initiatives like PPMI, fostering international collaborations across 30+ institutions to accelerate biomarker discovery and therapeutic development for Parkinson's disease.
