Gregory Albers, MD
Stanford University

Dr. Gregory W. Albers is the Director of the Stanford Stroke Center, a position he has held since co-founding the center in 1992. Under his guidance, the Stroke Center has trained more than 40 clinical stroke specialists; many of these individuals are directing stroke centers at academic institutions throughout the world. Dr. Albers’ primary research focus is the diagnosis, management, and prevention of ischemic stroke.  Dr. Albers was instrumental in the development a medical imaging platform called RAPID that allows physicians to identify stroke patients who have salvageable brain tissue. RAPID was used to select patients for enrollment in the EXTEND,  EXTEND-IA, SWIFT PRIME, DEFUSE 3 and DAWN studies. These studies, which have all been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, led to landmark changes in both intravenous and endovascular stroke therapy- substantially more stroke patients can now be successfully treated. 

Dr. Albers completed his medical training with a neurology residency and cerebrovascular disease fellowship at Stanford. He joined the Stanford faculty in 1989, and the following year won the Lysia Forno Award for Teaching Excellence. 

Enrique Leira, MD, MS
University of Iowa

Enrique C. Leira MD MS is the Director of the Division of Cerebrovascular Disease and Head of the Comprehensive Stroke Center. He is an experienced board-certified vascular neurologist, and a trained epidemiologist. Dr. Leira is a tenured Professor in Neurology with secondary appointments in Neurosurgery and Epidemiology. He is also a member of the Operator Performance laboratory in the College of Engineering. His research focus is acute stroke management and prevention, including evidence-based strategies to improve and accelerate stroke treatment in rural areas. He conducted a pivotal clinical trial of delivering an intervention during the helicopter evacuation of patients to a comprehensive stroke center. This led into novel translational animal studies studying the effect of helicopter transport on acute stroke and reperfusion, which lead to the discovery of low frequency vibration as a synergistic intervention to thrombolytic therapy. Dr. Leira research has been funded by the NINDS-NIH. He is a principal investigator he University of Iowa StrokeNet Regional Coordinating Center Infrastructure (https://www.nihstrokenet.org/). He is also a principal investigator for the SPAN Network for advancing neuroprotective therapies through multicenter translational animal studies (https://spannetwork.org/). Dr. Leira has been very active in leadership positions with the American Stroke Association. American Academy of Neurology, and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is currently an associate editor for the journal Stroke.

Richard Harvey, MD
Brain Innovation Center

Richard L. Harvey, MD, is the David W. Trott Clinical Chair of Shirley Ryan AbilityLab’s Brain Innovation Center, and the Wesley and Suzanne Dixon Stroke Chair of Stroke Rehabilitation Research. He is also a Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. 

Dr. Harvey’s research focuses on novel approaches to task-oriented therapy and the role of neuromodulation as an adjunct to movement recovery after stroke. He was the lead investigator of the NICHE (Navigated Inhibitory rTMS to Contralesional Hemisphere) and E-FIT (Electric Field Navigated 1 hZ rTMS for Post-stroke Motor Recovery) multicenter trials on navigated brain stimulation for upper-limb recovery after stroke.

He earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed residency training at the University of Toledo College of Medicine and Life Sciences. He did additional research training as a research fellow at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago (now Shirley Ryan AbilityLab) and Northwestern University (1992-93) and participated in the Rehabilitation Medicine Scientist Training Program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Association of Academic Physiatrists (AAP).