Managing challenges for women in neurology

I'm Dr Azza abdel Nasser. I have been a Professor of Neurology in Ain Shams University, Egypt since 2010. I was the director of stroke unit for 3 years till 2014. I then became the director of Neurology department till the time being. I was also a Senior professor in the MS unit in our hospitals. From the period of February 2022 till February 2023 I was elected to be the president of Egyptian Society of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Considered to be one of the most eminent societies in our country. It was a great opportunity that allowed me to have contact and interact

with colleagues and professors over the Egyptian universities as well as the presidents of international organisations. It was a pleasure to own this title as a female doctor as most of the previous presidents were males hoping to be a role model and that I would have encouraged females and proof they can be efficient in their jobs.

Reetta Kälviäinen is the Full Professor and Chair of Neurology in the University of Eastern Finland and the Director of the Kuopio Epilepsy Center in the Kuopio University Hospital. She leads an active clinical epilepsy research group and large epilepsy biomarker study in Kuopio. She serves in the executive committee of the European Reference Network for rare and complex epilepsies EpiCARE (of which Kuopio Epilepsy Center is a full member) and in the management group of the Epilepsy Scientific Panel of the European Academy of Neurology. She is the member of the board of the Neurocenter Finland. She has been active in patient-public-involvement activities and is an honorary president of the Finnish Epilepsy Association.

After finishing her medical school in Greece, Maria, initially with the support of scholarship from the Greek Neurological Society, moved to Germany and received neurology training at the Parkinson’s center of excellence, Neurology clinic, Philipps University Marburg, Germany, where she also completed her Doctoral degree, Habilitation and Professorship over the years. After receiving an EAN fellowship (former EFNS), she moved to Queen Square, UCL, London, UK, where she completed a fellowship in Movement Disorders. After that, she returned to her home country, to build up a Movement Disorders center.

Her main clinical and research expertise is Parkinson’s disease and other Movement Disorders. In particular, her clinical expertise focuses on Parkinson’s disease, atypical parkinsonism dystonia, tremor, ataxia and other Movement Disorders. Her main research area is progressive supranuclear palsy and related atypical parkinsonian syndromes, as well as genetic forms of Parkinson’s disease. She has been an author > 200 PubMed indexed articles with an h-index of 57. She has been a speaker in numerous international and national conferences on Parkinson’s disease and other Movement Disorders. She has served, among others, as assistant editor for the Movement Disorders Journal, as co-chair of the PSP study group of the International Parkinson’s disease and Movement Disorders Society (MDS) and as member and later co-chair of the Ethics and Quality committee of the EAN. Currently, she is chairing the MDS International Programme Scientific Committee and is serving as MDS-European Section treasurer. She has been awarded several awards in her research area including the L’oreal - UNESCO for Women in Science national award 2018 and the Standout Achievement Award from CurePSP in 2020.

As per her statement during the L’oreal - UNESCO for Women in Science awards ceremony: “I wish to actively contribute to supporting younger women to get involved in the field, as I have a strong belief that science needs the best of all of us to move forward”.