Sue Spence is a Registered Nurse with over 30 years of experience in neuroscience nursing, 8 of those being in the field of Multiple Sclerosis. She did her basic training in England at Manchester Royal Infirmary and her neuroscience nursing training at The National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London.
In 1989 Ms Spence immigrated to California where she became a Certified Neuroscience Registered Nurse and then in 2002 became one of the first Multiple Sclerosis Certified Nurses. She now works in a pediatric neurology clinic where she maintains her interest in MS. She is an active member of the clinical advisory committee for the local chapter of the MS Society and is helping to develop programs for the pediatric MS population. Ms. Spence has served on several MS nurse advisory boards, as past president and secretary for the local American Association or Neuroscience Nurses and speaks regularly to patients and her peers on MS and related topics.
Dr. Florin received a Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in English from Cornell University and graduated Alpha Omega Alpha from Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following research fellowships sponsored by the National Institutes of Health at Stanford Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, he completed an internship at University of California San Francisco and Neurology residency at Albert Einstein. He is board-certified in Neurology, Clinical Neurophysiology and Headache Medicine.
Dr. Florin has over 30 years of experience in clinical Neurology. He is Adjunct Professor of Clinical Medicine at Keck School of Medicine (USC) and is the founder and medical director of Fullerton Neurology and Headache Center. He and his center are certified by the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers and are involved in clinical trials in neurological disorders. He has been recognized by the Orange County Medical Association as a Physician of Excellence in Neurology.
Dr. Rae-Grant is a Board Certified Staff Neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic. His area of expertise is in multiple sclerosis and related diseases. He also is involved in many educational activities at the Clinic and regionally.
After receiving his BA in Biochemistry and molecular biology from Yale, he attended McMaster University Medical School in Canada. He did 2 years of internal medicine at the University of Toronto, and completed a neurology residency at the University of Western Ontario. He was a staff neurologist at the Lehigh Valley Hospital in eastern Pennsylvania for a number of years where he founded the Multiple Sclerosis Center of the Lehigh Valley. He served in a number of leadership positions at that institution including Chair of the Ethics Committee, Chair of Neurology, and President of the Medical Staff.
He joined the staff at the Neurological Institute in 2007 and works at the Mellen Center for MS. At the Mellen Center he directs educational efforts including website management, newly diagnosed classes, regional conferences, and patient education material development. He is active in clinical trials in the treatment of MS with the Experimental therapeutics program at the Mellen Center.
He has written a textbook of neurology “Neurology for the house officer”, and co-edited another textbook of neurology “The 5 minute consult in neurology”. He is active in neurology resident education and co-directs the neurosciences clerkship at the Cleveland Clinic.
Fred D. Lublin, M.D., is the Saunders Family Professor of Neurology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis at that institution.
Dr. Lublin received his medical degree in 1972 from Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, PA. He completed his internship in Internal Medicine from the Bronx Municipal Hospital, Albert Einstein Medical Center, and his residency at the New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center.
As a neuroimmunologist, Dr. Lublin has a special interest in immune functions and abnormalities affecting the nervous system. He has been involved in both basic science and clinical research. He and his colleagues were among the first in the country involved with studies of Interferon beta-1b, which was approved by the Food & Drug Administration in 1993 to treat the relapsing-remitting form of Multiple Sclerosis. He is currently involved with several new clinical research protocols on promising agents for treating various aspects of MS. He was chairman of the National MS Society (USA) advisory committee on clinical trials of new drugs in Multiple Sclerosis and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Research Programs Advisory Committee. He is a member of the National MS Society National Board of Directors and their medical advisory board. Dr. Lublin and his colleagues at the National MS Society have re-defined the clinical course definitions of MS using data from a survey of the international MS community. He has chaired a task force on the ethics of placebo-controlled trials in MS. Dr. Lublin was a member of the panel that redefined the diagnostic criteria for MS. Dr. Lublin has published numerous scientific articles and belongs to many professional societies and advisory boards. Dr. Lublin has served as a consultant to the National Institutes of Health and to many pharmaceutical/biotech companies in all phases of new drug development and in preparation for presentation to the FDA and their advisory panels. He is the Principal Investigator of the NIH-sponsored multicenter Combination Therapy study in Multiple Sclerosis.
Gareth Parry, M.B., Ch.B, F.R.A.C.P., is Professor of Neurology and Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit at the University of Minnesota and Medical Director of the University Multiple Sclerosis Center. He received his medical school training at University of Otago Medical School in New Zealand and completed his neurology residency and neuromuscular fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania, University of California, San Francisco, and LSU Medical School in New Orleans before coming to Minnesota. He was Head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Minnesota from 1996 until 1999 when he was offered the opportunity to return to New Zealand where he worked until returning to Minnesota in 2002. His principal clinical interests are in auto-immune neurological diseases including multiple sclerosis, inflammatory neuropathies, myasthenia gravis and inflammatory muscle diseases. He has participated in more than 10 MS clinical studies in the last 5 years. He served on the Medical Advisory Board of the Louisiana Chapter of the MS Society from 1988-1992 and has been on the Clinical Advisory Committee of the Minnesota Chapter since 2006. He has been actively involved with MS care for more than 30 years and currently cares for over 1000 MS patients.
Dr. Khan is the Professor of Neurology at Wayne State University School of Medicine, in Detroit, Michigan. He is the Director of the Wayne State University Multiple Sclerosis Research Center & the Image Analysis Laboratory. He is also the Director of the Multiple Sclerosis Clinic at the Detroit Medical Center with over 3500 patients in the MS Clinic, one of the largest MS Clinics in North America.
Dr. Khan has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers, abstracts, reviews, and book chapters. He has received numerous awards and serves as faculty for the American Academy of Neurology. Dr Khan is an elected member of the American Neurological Association. Dr Khan serves on the Medical Advisory Board of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, USA and serves on the CNS and PNS Advisory Committee of the F.D.A. He serves as a scientific reviewer for the National MS Society (USA), the NINDS (NIH), Canadian Multiple Sclerosis Society, Canadian Institute of Health Research, and the European Union. He also serves Dr. Khan has served as principal investigator on several landmark exploratory and multi-center clinical trials. His areas of interest include imaging, role of ethnicity and genetics in multiple sclerosis, and developing therapeutic approaches to treat multiple sclerosis, particularly aggressive forms. Dr Khan’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, Department of Veterans Affairs, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the pharmaceutical industry.