About Us

Welcome to the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford.

The Department has been a center of excellence for over four decades and includes over 130 faculty members with primary academic appointments in the department serving through the School of Medicine and four outstanding teaching hospitals and health care systems. These include Stanford Hospital and the adjacent Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, each of which is undergoing major expansion and transformation with the building of new adult and children’s hospitals. The Palo Alto VA is a top-tier modern, comprehensive veteran’s hospital which hosts many national academic clinical and research programs. Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is the second highest volume county hospital in California, serving a diverse spectrum of patients with a vast array of disorders. The ongoing population growth in Northern California and the Bay Area along with the technology and economic leadership of Silicon Valley continue to support the robust development of our four partnering health care systems and has made possible the Department’s status as a high-volume clinical program supporting excellence in clinical care, education and research.

Clinical services are offered by a full spectrum of divisions and programs within the Department including: General Neurology, Epilepsy, Stroke, Neurocritical Care, Neuro-hospitalist Care, Movement Disorders, Memory Disorders, Neuro-immunology-Multiple Sclerosis, Neuromuscular Diseases, Neuro-Oncology, Headache, Autonomic Disorders and Intraoperative Monitoring. Our Child Neurology Division is the largest on the West Coast. The Department provides care and consultative services to a large number of patients referred from throughout United States, and many patients from the Pacific Rim and other international locations. Our skilled clinicians provide comprehensive care to a diverse mix of patients and emphasize the monitoring and promotion of clinical quality and optimal outcomes, the use of multidisciplinary rounds for challenging cases, and deep collaborations across the other medical specialties.

Our educational programs offer outstanding, high volume residency training in adult and child neurology and post-residency fellowship training in most neurological subspecialties. Residents and fellows work closely with faculty mentors in a rigorous and diverse clinical environment to optimize training. Many faculty members are international leaders in their field and provide direct personal and professional mentorship to trainees. The School of Medicine offers nationally recognized, formal training for house staff that allows them to develop their own teaching and mentoring skills. The Stanford Neurology program is unique in the degree to which it provides residents with choices, in the form of extensive elective time and opportunities for career-building scholarly projects. Trainees may participate in specialized Stanford programs ranging from Global Health Neurology to the Stanford Biodesign Innovation Fellowship program. Additional program strengths include well-funded resident research tracks with mentored models designed to optimize transition from residency to fellowship and on to junior faculty positions, a formal neurology-specific trainee wellness and mentoring program, and rigorous clinical training. We are proud that many of the Department’s trainees and faculty alumni serve as department chairs, division chiefs and leaders in American neurology.

Research in the Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences covers a wide range of multidisciplinary programs ranging from basic neuroscience studies, quantitative sciences, translational studies and clinical trials. In addition, Stanford University is well known for its outstanding, high-impact neuroscience community consisting of several hundred faculty including many international leaders in multiple areas of neuroscience. The Stanford Neuroscience Institute integrates the entire neuroscience community and will soon be moving into its new complex currently under construction adjacent to the School of Medicine and Medical Centers. The School of Medicine, along with the Stanford adult and children's hospitals, are fortunate to be one of 20% of medical school/hospital systems located on a main university campus, with Stanford University ranked among the top universities in the world. This combination of neuroscience critical mass, high caliber research and direct, readily available interactions across a large range of campus disciplines makes possible a truly exceptional milieu for neurological research. As is the case overall for the Stanford School of Medicine, the Department ranks highly in the national context for NIH funding. Our location at the center of the largest technology and biotechnology hub in the United States is yet another substantial resource in our research environment. Along with an extensive and vigorous clinical experience, our residency program includes two funded research tracks, occurring during or immediately after residency, that allow our trainees to fully leverage this remarkable research setting. The recent opening of the Stanford Neurosciences Health Center and the Jill and John Freidenrich Center for Translational Research provide an important platform for the Department’s substantial clinical trial programs typically supporting more than 100 neurology trials at any given time.

We welcome your visit to our website.