63rd WINO Conference
Save the Date
Friday, March 21, 2025
University Marriott Park Hotel
480 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City, UT 84108
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Joseph E. Safdieh, MD FAAN
Gertrude Feil Associate Dean of Curricular Affairs
Vice Chair of Education and Professor of Neurology
Weill Cornell Medical College
Joseph E. Safdieh, MD is the Gertrude Feil Associate Dean of Curricular Affairs, Vice Chairman for Education and Professor of Neurology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his bachelors degree in neuroscience, summa cum laude, from the College of Arts and Science of New York University. He received his medical degree (MD) from the New York University School of Medicine, where he received the Alpha Omega Alpha Award for graduating first in his class. He completed his neurology residency training at the Weill Cornell Campus of New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he also served as Chief Resident in the Department of Neurology. Dr. Safdieh is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honors society.
Dr. Safdieh was the director of the medical student Neurology Clerkship for the Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical director of the Neurology Clinic at New York-Presbyterian Hospital and also served as Director of Outpatient Training for the Neurology Residency Program As associate dean for curricular affairs, he is responsible for overseeing the implementation and quality of the MD curriculum at Weill Cornell Medicine. He is well respected as an innovative medical educator, and has developed numerous curricula for the teaching of neurology to medical students and other physicians. He has been recognized for his excellence in medical student education locally, nationally and internationally.
Dr. Safdieh has served in various committee roles with the American Academy of Neurology, where he is currently vice chair of the publications committee. He served as chair of the Consortium of Neurology Clerkship Directors. He is currently editor-in-chief of Neurology Today, the official news source of the American Academy of Neurology.
Anastasia Zekeridou, MD, PhD, FAAN
Senior Associate Consultant
Associate Professor of Neurology and Laboratory Medicine and Pathology
Neuroimmunology Laboratory Co-Director
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
Dr. Zekeridou is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Laboratory Medicine and Pathology and Co-Director of the Neuroimmunology Laboratory at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Dr. Zekeridou earned her MD and PhD degrees in Greece and completed her neurology training in the University Hospital of Lausanne in Switzerland (CHUV) before joining Mayo Clinic, initially as a research fellow in the Neuroimmunology Laboratory, then autoimmune neurology clinical fellow. She has been on staff at Mayo Clinic Rochester since 2018, seeing patients in the Autoimmune Neurology Clinic and working in the Neuroimmunology Laboratory.
Dr. Zekeridou’s research interests are on neurological autoimmunity including paraneoplastic neurological diseases and complications of cancer immunotherapy, autoimmune movement disorders including stiff person spectrum disorders, neural autoantibody discovery and utility of biomarkers to aid diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutic decision-making for patients with neurological autoimmunity.
Deborah Hall, MD PhD
Department of Neurological Sciences
Rush University
Deborah Hall, MD, PhD, is an adult neurologist and movement disorder specialist at RUSH University Medical Center. She received her MD from Indiana University and her PhD from University of Colorado, where she also completed a residency and fellowship. She has training in genetics, epidemiology and human subjects research. She conducts research primarily in two areas. Her work in Parkinson's disease focuses on early interventions, such as neurotrophic factors and exercise, genetics and genomic causes of disease, and treatment for complications including falls. She also conducts research in the field of ataxia, specifically fragile X-associated disorders, by investigating epidemiology, clinical features of movement and balance, and interventions.
She has been National Institutes of Health funded for the last ten years as a primary investigator and she received the RUSH University Faculty Award for Research in 2014. She is the chair of the RUSH Institutional Review Board, which reviews research studies at RUSH. She has a busy clinical practice focused on movement disorders within the Department of Neurological Sciences at RUSH. She is the director of the FXTAS Clinic at RUSH and the Movement Disorder DNA Repository within the Section of Movement Disorders at RUSH. In addition, she is clinical director of the neuroscience block for the first year medical students at RUSH University.