Winifred Masterson Burke Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and Associate Dean (affiliate), Weill Cornell Medicine; Director, Laboratory for Neural Redox Biology and Homeostatic Transcription, and CEO, Burke Neurological Institute
Dr. Rajiv R. Ratan is the Winifred Masterson Burke Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience and an Associate Dean (affiliate) at Weill Cornell Medicine. Additionally, since 2003, he has directed and built the Burke Neurological Institute, a leading organization whose mission is to cure neurological disability once patients have exhausted everything that the health care system has to offer. In this role, he has created and implemented a strategic plan to bring the best in contemporary neuroscience to bear on repairing the brain and the spinal cord. He is also the Founder of NeuroCuresNY, a non-profit funded, in part, by the state of New York, that brings together the University of Rochester, the Center for Adaptive Neurotechnology at Wadsworth, Johns Hopkins and the Burke Neurological Institute to collaborate on the first clinical trials platform for chronic stroke in the United States.
After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience from Amherst College, Dr. Ratan completed an M.D. and Ph.D. at New York University and was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha. He trained in Neurology and Neurorehabilitation at Johns Hopkins from 1989 to 1994 and was awarded the Jay Slotkin Award for Excellence in Research and the Passano Foundation Clinician Scientist Award. He moved from Hopkins in 1996 to start the Neuroprotection Laboratory in the Department of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. In 2003, he was selected to be the second Director of the Burke Neurological Institute after a national search and appointed to CEO in 2021.
