Chair of Neurology Named President of the Neurocritical Care Society

Panayiotis Varelas, MD, PhD, the Bender Endowed Chair of Neurology, has been named President of the Neurocritical Care Society (NCS)’s Board of Directors. NCS is an international multidisciplinary society whose mission is to improve outcomes for patients around the world with life-threatening neurological illnesses.

Dr. Varelas has been involved with the NCS since its inception 20 years ago and has participated in many committees and served two four-year Board terms.

“It is a great honor and responsibility to be able to continue serving NCS as its 14th president, which will allow me to continue providing and advocating for the highest quality of care for critically sick patients with neurological and neurosurgical illnesses,” said Dr. Varelas.

As president, Dr. Varelas hopes to encourage collaboration among all professional neurological societies, including the American Academy of Neurology, the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, and he also plans to continue to expand the global partnership with intensive care societies around the world, especially in Africa. He will continue to advance the NCS’s Curing Coma, a global public health initiative that is the first to tackle the underlying concept of coma as a treatable and reversible condition.

Dr. Varelas received his medical degree from the University of Athens Medical School in Greece, and. completed a neurology residency at the Aeginition University Hospital in Athens. He was a research fellow in the Department of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and then repeated a complete residency in neurology at Yale University School of Medicine before sub-specializing in neurological intensive care at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Subsequently, he created two neurointensive care units, one at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and one at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, before moving to Albany Medical College.