Featured Board Member

Stanley Fahn, M.D.
Scientific Director, Chief of the Movement Disorders Division at Columbia University

Dr. Stanley Fahn is widely regarded as the leading figure in the Parkinson’s community. He is the H. Houston Merritt Professor of Neurology at Columbia University and directs the University’s Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Other Movement Disorders.

He is past President of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) and co-founder of both The Movement Disorder Society (MDS) and the Parkinson Study Group (PSG). He has trained many Fellows in the field of Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders, and for his teaching skills, the AAN presented him with its A.B. Baker Award for outstanding educational contributions to neurology. The AAN also honored him with its Wartenberg Award for outstanding clinical research. In 2007, Dr. Fahn received the James Parkinson Award for 2007 from the Parkinson's Disease Foundation (PDF) in recognition of his lifetime of achievement as a scientist, teacher, clinician, and builder of professional organizations in the area of Parkinson’s disease.

His contributions to Parkinson's science include developing the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, which is the world-wide standard for quantifying symptoms and signs of Parkinson’s disease; discovering with Lucien Côté, M.D. the high concentration of neurotransmitter activity in the substantia nigra signifying its major role in basal ganglia activity; correlating the plasma levels of levodopa with clinical fluctuations; and conducting many controlled clinical trials, including the ground-breaking work on the ELLDOPA project. This study discovered that levodopa does not hasten the clinical progression of Parkinson’s disease, as some scientists had feared, and may actually slow it down. For this work, Dr. Fahn was awarded the Annemarie Opprecht Foundation’s Parkinson Award for 2005, given every three years to the authors of the most outstanding papers published in Parkinson’s research.

In addition to publishing research, he sees a full schedule of patients, runs conferences, participates in dozens of scientific panels and supervises a group of talented postdoctoral fellows, the future leaders of his field.

Since 1973, Dr. Fahn has served as PDF’s Scientific Director, playing an integral role in shaping PDF’s research, education and advocacy programs. He was also Chair of the 2006 World Parkinson Congress, which provided an international forum for the latest scientific discoveries, medical practices and caregiver initiatives related to Parkinson’s disease.