Stroke Genetics

Pankaj Sharma, MD, PhD, FRCP, Reader & Consultant Neurologist, Imperial College London & Hammersmith Hospitals, London, UK. He is the Director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Research and also a consultant neurologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust. He holds a University of London Chair of Neurology at Royal Holloway. He is a former British Heart Foundation Clinician Scientist at Cambridge and a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard Medical School. He holds double doctorates from both the University of Cambridge and University of London. Most recently he led the internationally renowned Imperial College Cerebrovascular Research Unit at Imperial College London. Professor Sharma’s research seeks to use genetics, genomics and proteomics to advance human understanding of cerebrovascular disease in three key areas: prediction, diagnosis and treatment of stroke at the molecular level.  He has a particular interest in the genetics of stroke in ethnic minorities, particularlySouth Asians and Middle Eastern populations. In 2015 he was named the UK’s top Asian Doctor at the British Indian Awards. 

James F. Meschia, MD, Chair, Department of Neurology, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, Florida, USA. James Meschia is chair of the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida and his clinical interests include inherited cerebrovascular diseases, including single-gene disorders, such as cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), Fabry disease, and sickle cell disease. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and went on to complete an internal medicine program in his home state at the University of Colorado. He then completed a neurology residency at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, followed by a vascular neurology fellowship at Indiana University. From there he joined Mayo Clinic staff. Dr. Meschia has authored over 200 scientific publications and has served on the editorial boards of Stroke, the European Journal of Neurology, the Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, and Mayo Clinic Proceedings. He has been a member of several scientific review groups for NINDS and the American Heart Association and a fellow of the Academy of Neurology, American Neurological Association, and the American Heart Association.