Newswise — Abdolmohamad Rostami, M.D. Ph. D., professor and chair of the Department of Neurology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University and director of the Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunology Research Laboratory at Jefferson Hospital for Neuroscience has been elected the 126th President of the Philadelphia Neurological Society.

"I am extremely honored to serve as president of this prestigious society," says Dr. Rostami. "I believe in the main tenet of this society, which is to promote neurology and to provide a forum to share technological advances in the field of neurosciences. By openly sharing ideas we can further advance the research into the causes of neurological diseases to ultimately find better ways to diagnose and treat them."

Dr. Rostami currently is the principal investigator for RO1 grants being funded by more than $4 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supporting extensive research in multiple sclerosis (MS) and neuroimmunology. He is also funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Dr. Rostami is the author of more than 130 scientific papers that have been published in such leading journals as Nature Immunology, Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America, Annals of Neurology, and Journal of Immunology.

Dr. Rostami is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, the Royal Society of Medicine in London and the College of Physicians in Philadelphia. He is a member of the American Neurological Association, the International Society of Neuroimmunology, the International Society of Neuroimmunomodulation, the International Brain Research Organization, the International Union of Immunological Societies, the American Association of Immunologists and the Society for Neuroscience.

Dr. Rostami has served on various study sections of the National Institutes of Health, and as a consultant for the Veterans Administration Medical Research Program, the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Society and the Australian Multiple Sclerosis Society. He has held editorial positions in such leading journals as Multiple Sclerosis and Journal of Neurological Sciences. Dr. Rostami has been invited to give more than 70 lectures and has authored, and/or co-authored, more than 15 book chapters. Dr. Rostami completed an internship and residency in medicine at the Shiraz University Medical School Hospital in Iran, where he also received his doctor of medicine degree with highest honors. Subsequently, he completed a residency in neurology and a fellowship in neuroimmunology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He served as a member of the faculty, rising to the rank of professor of Neurology and Medicine. While there he also served in many hospital and administrative roles including chief of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Neuroimmunolgy, and director of the Comprehensive Multiple Sclerosis Center. He also received a doctor of philosophy degree in Molecular Biology from Penn.

About the Philadelphia Neurological SocietyThe Philadelphia Neurological Society (PNS) was founded in 1883 by Dr. Charles Mills, Wharton Sinkler, Francis Dercum and J.K. Eskridge, and is dedicated to promoting the study of neurology in all its departments, and to provide an effective forum to share technological advances in the field of neurosciences. PNS provides a forum to congregate, discuss and learn together as a community. The Society's first president was S. Weir Mitchell, who was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College. For more information, log onto www.phillyneuro.org.