Krishnankutty (Krish) Sathian, MBBS, PhD, FANA, who previously served as professor of neurology, rehabilitation medicine and psychology at Emory University, has took over as chair of the Department of Neurology for Penn State College of Medicine and Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, effective July 1, 2017. Dr. Sathian is also Professor of Neurology, Neural & Behavioral Sciences and Psychology at Penn State University.

Dr. Sathian is committed to improving the lives of patients suffering from dementia and other neurological disorders.  A neurologist and neuroscientist with clinical and research interests in cognitive neurorehabilitation, his research interests also include multisensory perception, visual rehabilitation and interfaces between perception and language.

He underwent medical training at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, graduating as the class valedictorian. He obtained his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he was the recipient of the Sir MacFarlane Burnet Biomedical Research Scholarship of the state of Victoria and the Sir Grafton Elliot Smith Award of the Australian Neuroscience Society.

He moved to the United States for postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis, MO, then completed a residency in neurology at the University of Chicago. In 1994, he joined the faculty at Emory University. Dr. Sathian is a graduate of the Academic Leadership Program at Emory University. He directed the Rehabilitation Research and Development Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation at the Atlanta VA from 2009-2017, and served as neurology vice chair for faculty recruitment and development from 2015-17. He is a past president of the American Society for Neurorehabilitation (2013-14).

Dr. Sathian’s research has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from 1995-2018, and he has also received funding from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)  and private foundations. Apart from authoring numerous publications and book chapters, he is co-editor of a volume on cognitive plasticity. His study section service includes multiple NIH, VA and Department of Defense panels. A fellow of the American Neurological Association, he serves on a number of editorial boards, including that of the Journal of Neuroscience, and is a member of the Faculty of 1000. He received the 2001 Albert Levy Award for the best scientific publication by a senior faculty member at Emory University.