Challenges for women in Neurology

Dr. Christine Klein is a Professor of Neurology and Neurogenetics. She studied medicine in Hamburg, Heidelberg, Luebeck, London, and Oxford (UK) and did internships in Stockholm (Sweden), Rennes (France), Wollongong (Australia) and Vitebsk (Belarus). She moved to Boston from 1997-1999 for a fellowship in Molecular Neurogenetics with Dr. X.O. Breakefield and completed her neurology training at Luebeck University in 2004, followed by a series of summer sabbaticals in movement disorders with Dr. A.E. Lang in Toronto, Canada in 2004-2015. She was appointed Lichtenberg Professor at the Department of Neurology of Luebeck University in 2005, where her research has focused on the clinical and molecular genetics of movement disorders and its functional consequences. In 2009, Dr. Klein was appointed Schilling Professor of Clinical and Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Luebeck and became Director of the newly founded Institute of Neurogenetics in 2013.  

Dr. Klein has published >500 scientific papers and has an h-factor of 105 with >45,000 citations. She is Deputy Editor of ‘Movement Disorders’ and ‘Science Advances’ and former Associate Editor of ‘Annals of Neurology’ (until 2021), served as chair of the Congress Scientific Program Committee of the 2016/2017 Annual Congresses of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, was President of the German Neurological Society (~11,500 members) in 2019/2020, and is the current Chair-elect of the European Section of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS-ES). She has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2021. Twelve of her former doctoral students or mentees have been promoted to the level of assistant, associate, or full professor. 

Dr Alessandra Fanciulli holds a Tenure Track Professorship in Autonomic Neuroscience and is the Deputy Director of the Dysautonomia Center at the Department of Neurology of the Medical University of Innsbruck. Her research focuses on syncope and autonomic failure in parkinsonian and other neurodegenerative disorders. She coordinates a FWF-funded consortium on medical decision making in multiple system atrophy, studies on pain in people living with multiple system atrophy and on post-COVID-19 cardiovascular autonomic disorders.   

Dr Fanciulli is the Co-Chair of the EAN Scientific Panel for Autonomic Nervous System Disorders, Secretary of the European Federation of Autonomic Societies and of the Austrian Autonomic Society. For the EAN, she coordinates the upcoming guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of neurogenic urogenital dysfunction and on symptomatic treatment of atypical parkinsonian syndromes. In 2020, she received the Bilateral Scientific Cooperation Award of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Most importantly, Alessandra is mum to three marvellous boys.  

Isabel Pavão Martins is a neurologist who completed her medical training in Neurology at the Hospital de Sta Maria in Lisbon and also at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London. She is currently Associate Professor of Neurology at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon (FMUL) and Consultant Neurologist at the Hospital de Sta Maria. She is currently the Director of the Centro de Estudos Egas moniz of FMUL. She was President of the Portuguese Society of Neurology (2008-2010) and President of the Pedagogic Council of the Lisbon Faculty of Medicine (2015-2017). Her main research interests are Behavioral Neurology and Headache. She has 170 scientific publications in those fields.