2025 Speakers

J Mocco, MD, MS has dedicated his career to improving treatment options for acute stroke patients and advancing stroke systems of care.

He serves on the Joint Commission Technical Advisory Panel for thrombectomy-capable stroke centers and sits on the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Quality Accreditation Science Committee. Dr. Mocco also serves as an international primary investigator for THERAPY and COMPASS, two landmark trials evaluating aspiration thrombectomy for emergent large vessel occlusion. He has published over 500 peer-reviewed papers on stroke care, is the past chair of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Cerebrovascular Section and is immediate past President, the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery. Dr. Mocco received his medical degree from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He earned his Master of Science in biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University; he completed a residency in neurological surgery at the Neurological Institute of New York and a fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery at the University of Buffalo. He currently serves as a professor and senior system vice chair in the Department of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai.

Edward Duckworth, MD, MS, is an intracranial-focused neurosurgeon specializing in the treatment of complex cranial disorders, including the surgical treatment of hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke.

He is system director of neurosurgery for St. Luke’s and a voluntary clinical professor at UC San Diego. Dr. Duckworth holds the distinction of being dual fellowship-trained: in open cerebrovascular and cranial base surgery at Northwestern University and in endovascular neurosurgery/interventional neuroradiology at Semmes Murphey Neurologic and Spine Institute/ University of Tennessee Health Science Center. He has particular expertise in the treatment of complex aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations, carotid disease and cerebral hypoperfusion.

Adam Arthur, MD, MPH, attended college and medical school at the University of Virginia. During that time he joined the University of Virginia’s Department of Neurosurgery and conducted research on aneurysms and cerebral vasospasm.

He completed his internship and residency at the University of Utah, where he also completed his master’s degree in public health with a focus on clinical trials methodology. After finishing his neurosurgery residency, he joined the Semmes Murphey Clinic and the University of Tennessee Department of Neurosurgery. During his first two years in Memphis, he completed a fellowship in endovascular and cerebrovascular neurosurgery. He is one of the first neurosurgeons in the country to develop a busy practice in both open cerebrovascular surgery and endovascular neurosurgery. Now in his twentieth year in Memphis he holds the James T. Robertson Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at UTHSC and is also the Chair of the AANS/CNS Joint Cerebrovascular Section and the Chair of the Neurosurgery Research and Education Foundation. He is currently leading six different large scale multicenter clinicial trials and is actively engaged in developing and testing innovative strategies to improve patients’ lives across a number of disease states.

John Perl II, MD, is the director of neurointervention at St. Luke’s and formerly served as its neuroscience medical director. He was instrumental in establishing the stroke program and the endovascular neurosurgical and interventional neuroradiology program for the health system.

He completed his diagnostic radiology residency at the University of Alabama and his neuroradiology fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. His neurointerventional radiology training was at the University of Wisconsin under one of the founders of neurointerventional therapies, Dr. Charlie Strothers. Prior to coming to St. Luke’s in 2010, Dr. Perl worked at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis and at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation. In his previous roles, he was active in fellowship education and translational science as well as actively developed some of the neurointerventional tools that are still in use today.

Lucas Elijovich, MD, earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Tufts University and his medical degree from the University of Texas at Galveston. He completed his neurology residency at New York University, where he served as chief resident.

He pursued advanced interests in cerebrovascular disease, neurocritical care and interventional neuroradiology, completing fellowship training in stroke and neurocritical care at the University of California, San Francisco. He then trained with Dr. Alejandro Berenstein, one of the pioneers of interventional neuroradiology, in New York. Dr. Elijovich joined Semmes Murphey Clinic in 2010 and is a professor in the Departments of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center. He also serves as director of neurocritical for the University and director of neurointerventional surgery and the Vascular Anomalies Center for LeBonheur Children’s Hospital.

Dr Alexandrov received his MD degree in 1989 from the 1st Moscow Medical Institute (Sechenov) and specialized in clinical neurology at the Institute of Neurology, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, Russia.

He completed his fellowship training in stroke and cerebrovascular ultrasound at the University of Toronto with Dr John W. Norris and at the University of Texas with Dr James C. Grotta, and also received mentoring from Drs Dmitry K. Lunev, Patrick M. Pullicino and Sandra E. Black.

Dr Alexandrov is listed among Banner Best Doctors by Phoennix Magazine 2024; by US News&World Report Best Doctors and America’s Top Doctors in Neurology, 2011-14 and 5/5 ranking in 2020-21; by Castle Connoly as top 1% of specialists in Neurology in 2011-17, by Expertscape as World Expert (0.1% of scholars publishing in the past 10 years) in Stroke, 2019 and Expert, Ultrasonic Therapy, 2021.

Dr Alexandrov published 323 original papers, 3 textbooks, 16 case reports, 164 review articles, editorials, invited publications, and book chapters & over 350 abstracts presented at major scientific meetings and published in refereed journals. Current h-index 79.

Dr Alexandrov has trained 61 fellows in stroke and cerebrovascular ultrasound. He served as Director of the Neurosonology Examination (1998-2018) and President of the American Society of Neuroimaging (2019-2021), Board member of the Intersocietal Accreditation Commission (IAC-Vascular, 2006-20, IAC-CT 2023-26), founding Editor-in-Chief, Brain and Behavior (2011-2015), past and present Editorial Board member of Stroke, Cerebrovascular Diseases, International Journal of Stroke, Journal of Neuroimaging, S:VIN (Senior Guest Editor), Annaly Klinicheskoi I Experimentalnoi Nevrologii and Nevrologia and past member of the Society of Vascular and Internional Neurology (SVIN) Board of Directors, and Program Committee, International Stroke Conference, American Heart Association. He is an active elected member of the American Neurological Association.

Dr Alexandrov specializes in development of novel reperfusion therapies for stroke. As Semmes Murphey Professor and Chair of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center Neurology Department (2013-2023), he directed Mobile Stroke Unit, the first in the world equipped with state-of-the-art CT scanner performing head and neck CTA and accredited by IAC as CT laboratory, and created Memphis city-wide Neuro-critical Care, Epilepsy and Stroke Programs that achieved and sustained the highest per capita treatment rates with tPA and mechanical thrombectomy in the world in 2015-2022. In 2023, he became the inaugural Chair of the Department of Neurology, University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix.

Dr. Starke is a member of the departments of Neurological Surgery, Neuroradiology, Pharmacology, and Neurosciences. He has a busy clinical practice performing more than 700 operations each year.

He specializes in the treatment of cerebral vascular disease.

Dr. Starke is currently a tenured Professor of Neurological Surgery and Radiology at the University Of Miami MILLER School Of Medicine. Previously, he graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. from Princeton University and distinction in neuroscience. He obtained his medical doctorate from Albert Einstein graduating with distinction in clinical and translational research. He also obtained a Masters of Medical Science with distinction in neuroscience research as part of the National Institute of Health Clinical Research Training Program. He also completed a cerebral vascular research fellowship at Columbia University, which provided him with a wide background in epidemiology and statistics. Dr. Starke attended neurosurgery residency at the University of Virginia. He also completed endovascular neuroradiology fellowships at Thomas Jefferson University and University of Virginia and a cerebral vascular and skull base fellowship at Auckland University Hospital, New Zealand. He is board certified in Neurosurgery ABNS and certified by the Committee on Advance Subspecialty Training in Endovascular Therapies (CAST).

His laboratory is supported by multiple grants including more than 3 million dollars from the National Institute of Health to study aneurysms. His research focuses on cerebral vascular pathophysiology. These avenues allow for the development of novel cellular, medical, radiographic, surgical, and endovascular techniques. He has co-authored over 700 academic publications. As the Director of Neurovascular Research, he helps run numerous clinical trials for minimally invasive treatment of cerebral vascular disease and brain tumors.

Dr. Smith is a fellowship-trained neurointerventional radiologist with expertise in minimally invasive procedures of the brain, head, neck and spine. He specializes in both arterial and venous approaches for the treatment of many cerebrovascular disorders

including pulsatile tinnitus, idiopathic intracranial hypertension, spontaneous intracranial hypotension, cerebrospinal fluid venous fistulas, dural arteriovenous fistulas, arteriovenous malformations, stroke, brain aneurysms and other vascular disorders. Dr. Smith’s other interests include neurointerventional robotics, treatment of congenital vascular anomalies, and MRI-guided, focused ultrasound for the treatment of movement disorders such as essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease. After finishing his diagnostic radiology residency at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Dr. Smith completed diagnostic and interventional neuroradiology fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco.

Brett C. Meyer, MD, is a Stroke Neurologist and Co-Director of the Stroke Center at UCSD Medical Center, and is a Professor of Clinical Neurosciences in the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego.

He is the Clinical Director of Telehealth Operations for the UCSD Telehealth Program. He is Board certified in Neurology, and subspecialty Board certified in Cerebrovascular diseases, by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He specializes in acute cerebrovascular disease therapies and technological evaluation and treatment techniques as the Director of UCSD Stroke Telehealth network and initiatives.
Dr. Meyer’s clinical research is varied, encompassing clinical stroke scale evaluations, acute and hyper- acute therapies for stroke, and Internet applications of telemedicine for the evaluation and treatment of stroke. Dr. Meyer was the Principal Investigator for an NIH-SPOTRIAS clinical trial assessing the use of telemedicine in acute stroke management. He is currently the PI of a Regional Coordinating Center for NIH StrokeNet, which is developing late phase stroke therapies for acute, prevention, and rehabilitation.
In his role as Clinical Director of Telehealth Operations, he is responsible for the clinical development, implementation, and medical oversight of numerous telehealth initiatives for primary care and all specialties throughout the entire health system and its external partners. Dr. Meyer has presented at major academic meetings, and has been published in numerous journals including Lancet Neurology, Annals of Neurology, Stroke, Neurology, The International Journal of Stroke, The Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases, Academic Medicine, and Quality Management in Healthcare.

Jeffrey Steinberg, MD, is a neurosurgeon at UC San Diego Health who specializes in vascular diseases of the nervous system. Dr. Steinberg completed specialized training in both open and endovascular neurosurgery;

this includes traditional open neurosurgical procedures, such as aneurysm clipping, as well as minimally invasive endovascular procedures, such as aneurysm coiling. He also specializes in cerebral bypass procedures. Dr. Steinberg completed his neurosurgery training and a fellowship in neuroendovascular surgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine. He spent additional time at Stanford Medical Center with a focus on open cerebrovascular neurosurgery and moyamoya disease. During his residency, he received the Kaiser Excellence in Teaching Award. Currently, he is the director of the neurosurgical resident skull base lab, where he has contributed to the development of a novel surgical technique for the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia. Dr. Steinberg has published numerous manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and regularly presents at national conferences. He is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the North American Skull Base Society.

Alexander Khalessi, MD, MBA, is chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery; professor of neurological surgery, radiology and neuroscience; and the inaugural Don and Karen Cohn Chancellor’s Endowed Chair in Neurosurgery at UC San Diego. He is the current president of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS), the leading academic society for neurosurgical professionals worldwide.

A board-certified neurosurgeon, Dr. Khalessi specializes in complex cranial surgery, endovascular neurosurgery, stroke care and neurological oncology. In addition to his role as CNS president, Dr. Khalessi holds several national leadership roles, including serving on the AANS/CNS Washington Committee and the board of governors for the American College of Surgeons.

Dr. Khalessi has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and monographs, 230 abstracts and presentations, and served as principal or co-investigator of more than 25 clinical trials and grants. His research has spurred advances in treatment and surgical approaches for stroke, cerebral aneurysms, AVMs and more neurological conditions.

Dr. Khalessi earned his medical degree at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and completed his neurosurgical residency at the University of Southern California with an enfolded endovascular neurosurgery fellowship at SUNY-Buffalo. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in public policy and a master’s degree in health services research from Stanford University. He earned a master’s degree in business administration from Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

Brian T. Jankowitz, M.D. is a board certified neurosurgeon with a special focus on cerebrovascular surgery.  He is CAST (Committee on Advanced Subspeciality Training) accredited in neuroendovascular surgery.

Dr. Jankowitz specializes in innovative treatments for ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke including carotid disease, intracranial stenosis, brain aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations (AVMs), and vascular malformations of the spine. He has extensive training in open and endovascular surgical procedures including CEA, TCAR, carotid stenting, aneurysm clipping, aneurysm coiling, and acute stroke interventions.

Prior to joining the Hackensack Meridian Neuroscience Institute at JFK University Medical Center, Dr. Jankowitz was the Division Head of Cerebrovascular Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.  He had previously served as the Director of the Cerebrovascular Program at Cooper Neurological Institute in Camden, New Jersey. He was also an associate professor of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and served as faculty of the UPMC Neurosurgery Department and UPMC Stroke Institute where he specialized in both open and endovascular neurosurgery.

Earning his bachelor of science degree from the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Jankowitz received his medical degree from Temple University School of Medicine. He then went on to complete his surgical internship, neurosurgical residency, and fellowship in Neuroendovascular surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Jankowitz is a member of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons, the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery and the American Heart Association. He is also a member of the Congress of the Neurological Surgeons and the Endovascular Neurosurgery Research Group, and holds editorial positions on several national medical publications including The Spine Journal, World Neurosurgery, Neurosurgical Review, Interventional Neurology and the Journal of NeuroInterventional Surgery. He is also a primary investigator for several national clinical trials.

Anne Alexandrov, PhD, AGACNP-BC, ANVP-BC, FAAN, is a professor of both nursing and neurology as well as the mobile stroke unit chief nurse practitioner at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis.

She is also the professor and program director for Neurovascular Education and Training in Acute Stroke Management and Reperfusion Therapies (NET SMART) at the Health Outcomes Institute in Fountain Hills, Arizona. Developed in 2007, NET SMART is the world’s first and only post-graduate fellowship training program for advanced practice nurses in acute stroke. Through this program, she has mentored more than 150 APNs from across the U.S. and internationally.

Dawn Meyer is a Professor in the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Neurosciences Department and a member if the UC San Diego Stroke Center. She is a trained Vascular Neurology Nurse Practitioner and has been in practice for 21 years as a Stroke Hospitalist.

She trained in Vascular Neurology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, completed her PhD at UCLA focusing on antiplatelets and sex differences in a preclinical model of stroke, and has been a faculty member of UCSD School of Medicine for 13 years. The overarching focus of her research is the interaction of platelet aggregation, sex differences, and depression in acute stroke. Her daily clinical practice focuses on the acute diagnosis, treatment, and risk factor modification in ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, and intracerebral hemorrhage patients.  She was the first to show that antiplatelet loading improved stroke behavioral outcome in a preclinical model of ischemic stroke. In 2013, she was elected as a Fellow to the American Heart Association. She has published in top-tier stroke journals and has been a co-investigator in over 50 clinical stroke studies, site PI in 4 NIH studies, and PI of two NIH grants. Her current work focuses on the entire spectrum of stroke from translational to outcome studies with emphasis on antiplatelets.

Dr. Jovin is an expert in interventional and non-interventional treatment for the entire spectrum of stroke and cerebrovascular disorders. He was one of the nation’s first interventional neurologists, a medical subspecialty that uses minimally invasive technologies applied from within the vessels to diagnose and treat diseases of the arteries and veins of the head, neck, and spine such as acute stroke, carotid stenosis, intracranial aneurysm, and arteriovenous malformations.

In addition to his clinical experience, Dr. Jovin is known internationally for his research activities. He has served as principal investigator for several international clinical studies including REVASCAT, a randomized trial of endovascular therapy versus medical therapy for acute stroke within eight hours of symptoms onset conducted in Spain, and DAWN, a multicenter, international, randomized trial of endovascular therapy versus medical therapy in the beyond eight-hour time window. Both studies are considered landmark studies in the development of treatments for acute stroke and have been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is a member of the executive or steering committees for several multicenter national and international trials and has participated as site principal investigator or co-investigator in multiple national and international trials.

Additionally, he serves as an editorial board member for numerous medical journals. Dr. Jovin has published more than 300 articles in peer-reviewed journals or book chapters. The consequential nature of his research is evidenced by recently published studies that have identified Dr. Jovin as the highest impact author in the neuro-interventional field.

Prior to joining Cooper, Dr. Jovin was a professor of neurology and neurosurgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and director of the Center for Neuroendovascular Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). At UPMC, he also served as the director of UPMC’s Stroke Institute, one of the leading centers for stroke care, education, and research in the world.

Dr. Josh Abecassis is an ABNS board certified, cerebrovascular/skullbase neurosurgeon at the University of Louisville, where he is Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurological Surgery, the Director of the Cerebrovascular Program, and Director and Founder of the Louisville Cerebral Bypass Program. He sees and treats patients with the full spectrum of cerebrovascular disease, as well as patients with skull base tumors.

He completed undergraduate and medical school studies at Northwestern University as part of the accelerated 7-year medical program. He completed a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research fellowship at the National Institute of Health during his time in medical school. He completed a residency in neurological surgery at the University of Washington,  with an enfolded fellowship dedicated to complex cranial, skull base microsurgery for tumors, aneurysms, and other cerebrovascular diseases. He completed a post-graduate CAST accredited fellowship in endovascular neurosurgery at the University of Miami. He is a member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Congress of Neurological Surgeons, Society of Neurointerventional Surgery, and the North American Skull Base Society.

Philip Bath (FRCP DSc FMedSci) is Stroke Association Professor of Stroke Medicine, Head of Academic Stroke and Director of the Stroke Trials Unit at the University of Nottingham; an Emeritus National Institute of Health Research Senior Investigator; and a consultant stroke physician at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust. He was the UK Stroke Association’s Keynote Lecturer in 2015, the International Stroke Conference William M Feinberg Award Lecturer in 2016 and received Presidents’ Awards from the British Association of Stroke Physicians in 2019, World Stroke Organisation in 2021 and European Stroke Organisation in 2023.

Prof. Bath is a clinical trialist with research interests in acute blood pressure management and antithrombotic therapy, treatment of post-stroke dysphagia, prevention of cognitive decline in cerebral small vessel disease/vascular dementia and use of artificial intelligence in stroke. He has >560 peer-reviewed publications. He was Chief Investigator of the TAIST (low molecular weight heparin, Lancet 2001), ENOS (glyceryl trinitrate, Lancet 2015), STEPS (pharyngeal electrical stimulation, Stroke 2016), TARDIS (triple-antiplatelet therapy, Lancet 2018) and RIGHT-2 (glyceryl trinitrate, Lancet 2019) multicentre phase-3 randomised controlled trials and leads the ongoing PhEAST phase-4 trial of pharyngeal electrical stimulation in post-stroke dysphagia. He coordinates international collaborations on acute stroke blood pressure management and optimising the design and analysis of stroke and cognition-related trials.

Dr. Jay U. Howington, MD, completed his undergraduate work at Vanderbilt University and medical school at the Medical College of Georgia. After completing his residency at Louisiana State University and spending a clinical research year under the tutelage of Frank Culicchia (microsurgery) and Bob Dawson (interventional neuroradiology), he went to Buffalo with Nick Hopkins for two years. Upon the completion of his fellowship, he moved to Savannah to begin his practice and to work as an associate clinical professor in both the Departments of Surgery and Radiology at Mercer University as well as an assistant clinical professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Medical College of Georgia.

Dr. Howington became involved in organized neurosurgery through the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the AANS/CNS Cerebrovascular Section, the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery, the Neurosurgical Society of America and the Southern Neurosurgical Society, in which he just finished his tenure as president. He served on both the Young Neurosurgeons Committee and the Ethics Committee of the AANS; he currently serves on the Scientific Program Committee. He is a member of the American College of Surgeons and was elected as a governor; he serves both in that capacity as well as a liaison for neurosurgery. Dr. Howington is also a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s committee that evaluates new neurological devices as they move through the FDA approval process.

Dr. Srinivasan is a comprehensive cerebrovascular neurosurgeon, with advanced training in both microsurgical/skull base techniques as well as endovascular techniques to treat cerebrovascular disorders. As director of the Kim Innovation Lab, his group performs translational research studying aneurysm healing, endovascular device development and testing, intravascular imaging, and intra-arterial therapy for tumors.