Shyam Prabhakaran has been named the James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Professor in the Department of Neurology.

Prabhakaran is a vascular neurologist and epidemiologist and an internationally recognized leader in stroke research and treatment. He has led projects focused on uncovering the underlying causes of stroke using novel imaging techniques, improving stroke care delivery in prehospital and hospital settings, and optimizing stroke recovery. His research explores intersections between individual stroke risk factors and biomarkers, community health disparities, and learning health systems and uses computational and engineering methods to design and implement multi-level interventions to improve stroke care and patient outcomes. A powerful advocate for improving disparities in stroke care, he has been instrumental in reorganizing ambulance transports for acute stroke patients in Chicago and improving access to proven time-sensitive stroke treatments for Chicago residents.

He is chair of the Department of Neurology, an elected fellow of the American Heart Association and the American Neurological Association, and principal investigator of the Chicago Regional Coordinating Center in the National Institutes of Health’s Stroke Trials Network.