Newswise — LOS ANGELES (Jan. 7, 2015) – Axel Rosengart, MD, PhD, a prominent neurologist and clinical researcher whose work fostered the creation of medical devices to treat brain-injured patients, has joined Cedars-Sinai in two key neurology posts.

Rosengart will serve as director of neurocritical care and neurocritical care research. His research collaborations have focused on monitoring and helping patients with brain injuries, resulting in experimental medical devices and techniques to cool the brain, deliver drugs – such as the clot-busting drug TPA – or remove toxins from the bloodstream, and detect critical changes in patients at the bedside.

Since 2008, Rosengart has served as medical director of neuroscience intensive care and medical director of the neuroscience physician assistant service at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He also served as associate professor of neurology, neuroscience and neurosurgery and medical director of critical care and emergency neurology and neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College.

Rosengart previously was an associate professor at the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he was director of neurocritical care research.

“We are truly fortunate to have recruited a neurointensivist of his stature. After a national search and interviews with several of the most widely respected thought leaders in the emerging field of neurocritical care, we have found the perfect leader for our unit,” said Patrick Lyden, MD, chair of the Cedars-Sinai Department of Neurology, director of the Stroke Program and the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology. “

Rosengart earned his medical degree and PhD in neuroscience at universities in Germany, where he also completed a residency in neurology. He acquired additional postdoctoral training in neurology, stroke research, neuro-ophthalmology research, psychiatry and neuroscience critical care. He also earned a Master of Public Health degree in epidemiology.

Cedars-Sinai’s Neuroscience Critical Care Unit, with 24 beds, is one of the largest in the nation and has the lowest severity-adjusted mortality rate in California.