Dr. Jeremy Shefner is the Kemper and Ethel Marley Professor and Chair of Neurology and Senior Vice President of the Barrow Neurological Institute. He is also Executive Chair of Neurology at the University of Arizona Phoenix. He received his PhD in sensory physiology in 1976, and his MD with Distinction from Northwestern University Medical School in 1983. After completing residency training at the Harvard Longwood Neurology Training Program, he was a fellow in Neuromuscular Disease at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1988-1990. He joined the faculty at BWH in 1990, and moved to Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY in 1996, becoming Chair of Neurology in 2004. In October, 2014, Dr. Shefner moved to the Barrow Neurological Institute.
Dr. Shefner has been active in designing clinical trials in ALS for many years, and co-founded the Northeast ALS Clinical Trials Consortium (NEALS) in 1996. He was principal investigator for trials of creatine, talampanel, and tirasemtiv in ALS, and has been in leadership positions for many other trials. Dr. Shefner has been interested in improving outcome measures for ALS trials. He has developed numerous outcome measures for clinical trials, including motor unit number estimation, quantitative muscle strength testing using hand held dynamometry, and electrical impedance myography, and has explored their utility in both patients and animal models. In 2014, he was awarded the Sheila Essey Award for ALS Research by the American Academy of Neurology and the ALS Association.