Dr. Sean I. Savitz is the Chair of Lone Star Stroke Research Consortium and a tenured Professor of Neurology. He holds the Frank M. Yatsu Chair in Neurology, and directs the Stroke Program at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. He graduated from Harvard College, received his MD from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and completed neurology residency training and a cerebrovascular fellowship at the Harvard Medical School Neurology Training Program. He and his team run one of the largest academic stroke programs in the world, testing novel treatments for patients with ischemic stroke and brain hemorrhage. Dr. Savitz oversees a bidirectional, translational laboratory and clinical research program on cell therapies in stroke and is conducting some of the first clinical trials testing cell therapies in stroke patients. He also oversees a fellowship program to train stroke specialists and has won several teaching awards both in Boston and at UTHealth. He has been funded by grants from the National Institute of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the American Heart Association, and is an author of over 100 publications in the biomedical literature.
Dr. DaiWai M. Olson is the Co-Chair of Lone Star Stroke Research Consortium. He is a Professor of Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Director of the Neuroscience Nursing Research Center at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He graduated from Teikyo Marycrest University and earned his Ph.D. from University of North Carolina- Chapel Hill. He was an assistant professor at Duke University until 2012 when he relocated to work at the University of Texas Southwestern where he now the first nurse to be promoted to full Professor. Dr Olson’s work is focused on developing a more comprehensive understanding of how nursing care contributes to patient outcomes following acquired brain injury. In this endeavor, he has published over 300 manuscripts, 16 book chapters, and 200 scientific abstracts. He is the Editor-in-Chief for the Journal of Neuroscience Nursing and the co-chair of the International Neurocritical Care Research Network.
Dr. Jane Anderson is the Director of Operations at the Lone Star Stroke Research Consortium. She is the Director of Program Development and Evaluation for the VA National Telestroke Program (NTSP), an investigator with the Michael E. DeBakey VAMC HSR&D Center for Innovations in Quality, Effectiveness and Safety (IQuEST), and an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM). She is responsible for implementation and evaluation of Telestroke services in participating VA facilities. Her work within the VA also involves establishing research partnerships to inform the use of mHealth applications and other telehealth technologies to improve veterans’ access to the full continuum of stroke care, both inside and outside the VA system. She has developed a program of research to identify effective health information technology, telehealth modalities and implementation strategies for stroke care and prevention. Her funded projects include development and implementation of a telehealth self-management support program for stroke risk reduction, decision support tools for evidence-based stroke care, and a valid and reliable nurse-administered swallowing screening tool for patients with stroke.
Dr. Mark Goldberg is a member of the Lone Star Stroke Research Consortium executive committee. He works as a Professor in the Department of Neurology and Medicine at UT Health Science Center at San Antonio and an adjunct Professor with the Department of Neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. Additionally, Dr. Goldberg was professor of Neurology and founding director of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders at Washington University in St. Louis. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University after graduating from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in biology. He completed his Neurology residency at Stanford University, where he also was a postdoctoral research fellow. Dr Goldberg is board certified in neurology and vascular neurology. His research interests are in white matter injury and mechanisms of recovery after stroke. Under his past leadership, UT Southwestern underwent rapid growth in clinical and translational neuroscience, with state-of-the-art facilities for drug and device testing, and new initiatives to support collaborative research on brain disease therapy.
Dr. Steven Warach graduated from Michigan State University with a doctorate in neuroscience and psychology. He received his medical degree and neurology residency training at Harvard Medical School, before joining the Harvard Medical School faculty in 1993, as Chief of the Division of Cerebrovascular Diseases at Beth Israel Hospital. In 1999, he was recruited by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as Senior Investigator and Chief of the Section of Stroke Diagnostics and Therapeutics, a translational clinical research program in acute stroke that established the first stroke centers in Washington DC and Suburban Maryland. In 2011, he was recruited by University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the Seton Healthcare Family to serve as Professor and founding Executive Director of the Seton/UT Southwestern Clinical Research Institute of Austin. Dr. Warach’s research is internationally recognized as introducing advanced MRI methods for more accurate diagnosis of stroke into clinical practice and for pioneering patient-specific, imaging-defined therapeutic targets in the development of new stroke therapies.
Dr. Salvador Cruz-Flores, M.P.H., is Professor and Chair of Neurology at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center-El Paso. He attended medical school at the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon in Monterrey, Mexico and trained in Internal Medicine and Neurology at the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon. Dr. Cruz-Flores completed a neurology residency and a two-year fellowship in cerebrovascular diseases and neurocritical care at Saint Louis University. He also obtained a Masters degree in Public Health (Epidemiology) from Saint Louis University School of Public Health. Dr. Cruz-Flores is board certified in Neurology, Vascular Neurology, Neuro-Imaging, and Neuro-Critical Care.
Dr. James Grotta is the former Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. Dr. Grotta first joined the University of Texas – Houston Medical School faculty in 1979. His research focuses on the development of new therapies for acute stroke patients. He has been funded by the NIH for translational research from the laboratory to bedside and has been a leader of many clinical research studies of both thrombolytic drugs and cytoprotective agents after stroke. Dr. Grotta has built a collaborative network between the UT Stroke Team, Memorial Hermann Hospital, Houston Fire Department-Emergency Medical Services, and other regional stroke centers to increase the delivery of appropriate therapy to acute stroke patients in Houston, one of the first such networks in the country. In 2014, he moved his practice to Memorial Hermann Hospital to put into operation and evaluate the first Mobile Stroke Unit in the U.S. — an ambulance equipped with a CT scanner and staffed by Dr Grotta or another Vascular Neurologist, nurse, paramedic and CT tech to take emergency department evaluation and treatment directly to the acute stroke patient. Dr. Grotta received the Feinberg Award for Excellence in Clinical Stroke from the American Heart Association (AHA) in 1999, the AHA Physician of the Year Award for 2006, the Eugene Braunwald Award for Mentoring in 2010, and awards for teaching excellence at UT Medical School for 14 years. He has authored or co-authored more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
