Edward Goldstein, M.D.
Dr. Goldstein is Co-Director of the MDA Clinic, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite, Georgia, http://www.choa.org/neurosciences/mda-sr.shtml. His special interests include muscular dystrophy, spasticity and BOTOX therapy. His professional associations include the Child Neurology Society and the American Academy of Neurology.

Jonathan Goldstein, M.D.
Dr. Goldstein received his M.D. from Brown University in Providence, RI in 1986. He subsequently received his Neurology Residency and training in neuromuscular diseases from Yale University School of Medicine from 1987-1992. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Neurology at Yale School of Medicine since 1990 and is currently Associate Professor of Neurology, Director of the Yale MDA/ALS clinic and involved with clinical research in neuromuscular disease. More information can be found at the website http://info.med.yale.edu/neurol/programs/neuromuscular.html.

George Karpati, M.D.
Dr. Karpati is a graduate of Dalhousie Medical School at Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a physician scientist engaged in both clinical neuromuscular Neurology and myopathology as well as laboratory research in gene therapy for genetic muscle diseases. He holds the title of I. Walton Killam Chair and Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences at the Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI) of McGill University at Montreal, Canada. He is coordinator of the Neuromuscular Group at the MNI, which is a large and highly productive clinical and research group in this field. He has published close to 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers and review articles. During the past 3 years he edited 3 major books in the neuromuscular field, and was author of 2 authoritative books in the same field. He received numerous distinctions including being an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Can. Academy of Sciences) and an Officer of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian award. Dr. Karpati served as a member of the Medical Advisory Board of MDA for many years.

Wendy M. King, P.T.
Ms. King is a licensed physical therapist who has specialized in neuromuscular diseases for over 20 years. She received her B.A. at Ohio University and post baccalaureate degree in physical therapy from The Ohio State University. She is currently a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at OSU and has extensive experience as an evaluator in clinical trials of Duchenne, FSHD, Kennedy’s disease, LGMD, IBM, ALS and other NM diseases. She is a PT consultant at the MDA clinic at Ohio State and has co-authored numerous articles in the neuromuscular field.

John Kissel, M.D.
Dr. Kissel is currently Professor of Neurology and Vice-Chair of the Department of Neurology at The Ohio State University (OSU) in Columbus. He did his residency at Washington University in St. Louis, followed by one year of clinical neuromuscular fellowship and two years of research fellowship at OSU. He has been on the staff at OSU since 1985 in the Division of Neuromuscular Diseases, and is co-director of the Muscular Dystrophy Clinic there. Dr. Kissel has published extensively in a wide range of peripheral nerve, muscle, and anterior horn cell disorders. His particular interests include facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, and clinical trials in the various muscular dystrophies and inflammatory myopathies. He has also participated in clinical trials for the involving the inflammatory neuropathies, anterior horn cell diseases, and myasthenia gravis. He is the co-author of a popular textbook of peripheral nerve disease, “Diagnosis and Management of Peripheral Nerve Disorders,” and has written chapters for many of the standard neuromuscular textbooks. He is president-elect of the neuromuscular section of the American Academy of Neurology, a Fellow in the American Academy of Neurology, and a member of the American Neurological Association.

Albert R. LaSpada, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. La Spada is Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine,Adjunct Assistant Professor of Neurology, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Medical Genetics, and a Research Affiliate of theCenter on Human Development and Disability at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. His research focuses on understanding neuromuscular and neurodegenerative disease. In1991, he discovered the cause of X-linked spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA, Kennedy's disease), finding for the first time that trinucleotide repeats could expand in length to causean inherited human disease. Since this discovery, 14 more neurological diseases have been shown to be caused by trinucleotide repeat expansions, including Huntington's disease, myotonic dystrophy and two forms of mental retardation. SBMA is a lower motor neuron disease caused by polyglutamine repeatexpansions in the androgen receptor (AR). Dr. La Spada's team is trying to understand why motor neurons are exquisitely sensitive to glutamine tract expansions in AR by developing a variety of in vitro and in vivo models and how these disease mutations lead to the specific demise of nerve cells. Most recently, his group has been successful in creating a highly representative mouse model of SBMA by introducing a mutant version of the entire human AR gene into mice. Such work should go a long way toward the goal of developing treatments for SBMA and related motor neuron diseases.

Christian Lorson, Ph.D.
Dr. Lorson received his degree in Molecular Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Missouri Medical School in 1997. As a post-doctoral fellow at Tufts University School of Medicine, he began to examine the molecular basis of spinal muscular atrophy and has made contributions to understanding the molecular basis of this neuromuscular disorder. In 2000, Dr. Lorson received a New Investigator Development Award from MDA and soon joined the faculty at Arizona State University as an Assistant Professor in Biology. In 2002, Dr. Lorson and his laboratory moved to the University of Missouri, where he is currently an Assistant Professor and Associate Chairman of the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology.

Dennis J. Matthews, M.D.
Dr. Matthews is Chairman/Associate Professor, Dept. of Rehabilitation Medicine at The Children’s Hospital and the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver. Co-sponsored by MDA, he established and directed the Neuromuscular Clinic at the University of Minnesota (1979-84) and The Children’s Hospital Muscle Clinic beginning in 1988. The latter is a multi-specialty clinic to evaluate, diagnose and treat children and adolescents with neuromuscular disorders. Writing and lecturing extensively on the rehabilitation management of neuromuscular disorders, he presently serves on the NIH Task Force on Childhood Motor Disorders. His efforts helped create one of the premier pediatric rehabilitation medicine programs in the U.S. and assembled a team of highly qualified researchers interested in rehabilitation science. He is an editor of “Brain Injury,” “American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation” and ‘Pediatric Rehabilitation.”

Robert McMichael, M.D.
Dr. McMichael is the MDA Clinic Director in the Ft. Worth-Arlington, Texas area. Read more about Dr. McMichael in theQuest article at http://www.mda.org/publications/Quest/q62mcmichael.html .

Elizabeth McNally, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. McNally received her M.D. and Ph.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She completed her postgraduate training in Internal Medicine and Cardiology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. She is a board-certified cardiologist specializing in genetic forms of heart disease, including the heart disease that can accompany muscular dystrophy. She is an assistant professor in the Departments of Medicine and Human Genetics at the University of Chicago where she serves as the Director of Cardiovascular Research. Her research emphasizes mechanisms of muscle dysfunction in muscular dystrophy. She serves on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the MDA.

Darren Monckton, Ph.D.
Dr. Monckton is a Lister Institute Research Fellow and Reader in Genetics within the Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He received his PhD from the University of Leicester in 1992 and held postdoctoral positions in at Baylor College of Medicine and MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. It was whilst studying at Baylor that he became interested in myotonic dystrophy and his research group continues to be very active in attempting to understand the molecular genetics of myotonic dystrophy and other related disorders. Most recently, he was chair of the 4th International Myotonic Dystrophy Consortium Meeting held in Glasgow, April 2003.

Leslie Morrison, M.D.
Dr. Morrison originated and has directed the Pediatric MDA Clinic at the University of New Mexico since 1995. She has taken care of children with neuromuscular diseases since her first career in pediatric physical therapy. Through medical school at the University of New Mexico and residency training at Johns Hopkins Hospital (completed 1992), her interest in these disorders has grown. Clinical interests include inherited diseases of nerve and muscle, especially those that disproportionately affect New Mexican families. She has research projects in myotonic, oculopharyngeal and Duchenne muscular dystrophies. She loves mentoring students, residents, and young faculty and is developing a project for teaching primary care physicians about child neurology topics. Family workshops are being planned for Duchenne and oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy. She has served as an executive board member of New Mexico MDA, and as an MDA camp physician. Nationally, she currently serves on the executive boards of the Child Neurology Foundation, the Transverse Myelitis Association, as a member of the Practice Parameter committee of the Child Neurology Society, and as an examiner for the National Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and on the Recertification Committee for Child Neurology.

Tahseen Mozaffar, M.D.
Dr. Mozaffar obtained his M.D. from the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan and trained in neurology at Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University's Jerry Lewis Neuromuscular Research Center, he was a clinical and research fellow in neuromuscular disorders. He held faculty positions at Washington University and at the Aga Khan University before his appointment as Assistant Professor and Director of the Neuromuscular Program at University of California at Irvine (UCI). He directs the MDA Clinic and the UCI MDA-ALS Research and Clinical Center. He has published over a dozen articles in peer-reviewed journals. His interest in basic research is mechanisms of muscle atrophy and in clinical research is estimation of exercise tolerance in neuromuscular disorders.

Edward Anthony Oppenheimer, M.D.
Dr. Oppenheimer is an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine and previously Chief of Pulmonary Medicine at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. He has over twenty-five years experience with the clinical care of people with neuromuscular and musculoskeletal diseases and a particular interest in ALS. He developed a large regional program for the home care of children and adults in Southern California in 1985, and has been active both nationally and internationally in clinical research and education related to home mechanical ventilation. Dr. Oppenheimer assisted with the production of two MDA educational videotapes: "Breathe Easy" (for patients and families) and "Breath of Life" (for professional use). You will find it helpful to review the transcript of Dr. Oppenheimer’s Respiratory/Ventilation chat from last year.


Thomas A. Rando, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Rando received his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his residency training in Neurology at the University of California at San Francisco. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine where he is Director of the Muscular Dystrophy Clinic. He is also Chief of Neurology and Director of the Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center at the Palo Alto VA Medical Center. Dr. Rando's research concerns the mechanisms of muscle degeneration in the muscular dystrophies, gene therapy for these disorders, and the cellular and molecular basis of age-related changes in muscle. Dr. Rando has served on the Medical Advisory Committee for the MDA since 2001.

Jerold Reynolds, Ph.D., R.T.
Dr. Reynolds has been a respiratory therapist with the Ohio State University for 25 years. He currently is a faculty member of the OSU Department of Neurology and has a private practice of primarily neuromuscular patients. Along with Dr. Steven Nash and Dr. John Kissel, Dr. Reynolds helps run the OSU/MDA ALS Clinic. Dr. Reynolds is active in medical research as well as patient care and he has been published in several medical journals. He was nominated for the Lawrence A. Rand Award for his work with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

Jeffrey Rosenfeld, Ph.D., M.D.
Dr. Rosenfeld received his Ph.D. in neuroanatomy from the University of Connecticut in 1983. Following his experience at Johns Hopkins Hospital as a research associate he earned an M.D. degree at the University of Maryland. He completed a Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania followed by a faculty position at Emory University where he established the ALS/MDA clinic. Dr. Rosenfeld moved to the Carolinas Medical Center in 1998 to establish the Carolinas Neuromuscular/ALS-MDA Center, initiated by a significant endowment from the Charlotte community. Since the Program was initiated, patients have traveled to the Center in Charlotte from over 25 states and four countries. Most recently, the Carolinas Neuromuscular/ALS Center has received an additional $5 million private gift to further research in Limb Girdle Muscular Dystrophy. Dr Rosenfeld has published numerous articles and chapters and currently maintains an active clinical and basic science research program in motor neuron disease.

Zarife Sahenk, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Sahenk received her medical training at Hacettepe University Medical School, Ankara, Turkey, 1967-1972, and specialty training in neuromuscular diseases at The Ohio State University, Neuroscience Graduate Program, 1993-1998. She was the recipient of the MDA Clinical Fellowship, 1975-1976, and MDA Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship, 1976-1978. Dr. Sahenk was a Resident in Neurology, Hacettepe University, August 1972 - October 1972 and a Resident in Neurology, Department of Medicine, Division of Neurology, Ohio State University Hospitals, Columbus, Ohio, October 1972 - June 1975. She is now the Director of the Clinical and Experimental Neuromuscular Disease Laboratories, Division of Neuromuscular Disease, Department of Neurology, Ohio State University Hospitals. Her research and specialty interests are muscle and nerve disease, toxic neuropathies (drug induced), motor neuron disease (ALS), neuromuscular diseases, muscle and nerve biopsies; recent research involved CMT neuropathy gene mutations and their role in pathogenesis and studies on the abnormal Schwann cell-axon interactions in CMT.


Jeremy M. Shefner, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Shefner received a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from the University of Illinois in 1976, and an M.D. from Northwestern University in 1983. Postgraduate work in neurology and neurophysiology was performed at Harvard Medical School. He directed the ALS clinic at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston until 1996, when he moved to SUNY Upstate Medical University. He currently directs the MDA/ALS Research and Treatment Center at Upstate, and conducts research on the physiology of ALS in animal models, as well as clinical trials on potential ALS therapeutics. He is co-chairperson of the Northeast ALS Clinical Trials Consortium.

Nailah Siddique, RN, MSN
Ms. Siddique is a clinical nurse specialist with the Neuromuscular Disorders Program at Northwestern University. She holds a BSN from George Mason University and an MSN from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has worked in several major medical centers in neuroscience nursing, including NIH, UCLA and Duke. Since 1996 she has been at Northwestern, where she is part of the neurogenetics research team. She recruits families for genetic studies and counsels patients and families regarding ALS and related disorders.

Mark Tarnopolsky, MD, PhD, FRCP (C)
Dr. Tarnopolsky is a clinician-scientist and holds an endowed professorship in neuromuscular diseases at the Hamilton Hospitals Assessment Centre, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada. He has established a clinic to investigate and follow children and adults with suspected neuromuscular and neurometabolic disorders. The clinic offers a range of services from molecular and metabolic testing through to the physical medicine and rehabilitation aspects of long-term care for such patients. He also conducts research in the areas of muscle metabolism, experimental therapeutics for neuromuscular and metabolic diseases. Another strong emphasis is on the evaluation of nutrition, exercise and pharmacological strategies to enhance muscle function in health (sports) and disease (neuromuscular and neurometabolic). Dr. Tarnopolsky completed his bachelor of physical education (chancellor’s gold medal) and medical degree (MD) at McMaster University. Following this, he completed a PhD in nutrition and muscle metabolism at McMaster University) and then completed clinical sub-specialty medical training in internal medicine, neurology and physical medicine and rehabilitation at McMaster University and the University of Rochester (New York).

Gayle Traver RN, MSN
Ms. Traver is Associate Professor Emeritus, College of Nursing, and Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at the College of Medicine, University of Arizona and consulting clinical nurse specialist at University Medical Center in Tucson. She has been a pulmonary clinical nurse specialist for over 35 years. She has published numerous articles in medical and nursing journals, written two textbooks and patient education materials. She is presently involved in the development of the Southwest Ventilation Program at the Arizona Respiratory Center, University of Arizona.