President: Stanley Fahn, MD

Secretary: Serge Przedborski, MD, PhD

Treasurer: Robert Burke, MD

Directors: Marie-Francoise Chesselet, MD, PhD

      Patricia Davies

Executive Director: Elizabeth Pollard

Stanley Fahn, MD, is the founder and President of the World Parkinson Coalition, and co-chair of the first two World Parkinson Congresses.

Dr. Fahn is the H. Houston Merritt Professor of Neurology and Director of the Center for Parkinson's Disease and Other Movement Disorders at Columbia University Medical Center . He is the Past-President of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). He founded the Movement Disorder Society and served as the Chairman of its Steering Committee and was elected its first president. He was the founding co editor of the journal Movement Disorders, and also served as Associate Editor of Neurology for 10 years.

Dr. Fahn has twice served as Chairman of the Advisory Committee on Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs for the Food and Drug Administration. He currently serves on an NIH Oversight Committee to review and give advice on clinical trials on neuroprotection for PD. Dr. Fahn and his scientific colleagues at Columbia University were awarded a Morris K. Udall Parkinson's Disease Research Center of Excellence by the National Institutes of Health in 1999, and it is currently ongoing. Dr. Fahn organized and executed the development of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and modified and popularized the use of the Schwab England ADL score for global severity of this disease. Both of these rating scores are used worldwide, the former to determine the severity of PD, and the latter as a measure of quality of life. He has participated in many clinical trials of a variety of pharmacotherapeutic agents for PD.

Along with Dr. Ira Shoulson; Dr. Fahn was a co founder of the Parkinson Study Group (PSG), a consortium of clinical investigators dedicated to conduct controlled clinical trials on the prevention and treatment of Parkinson's disease. He has received numerous honors and delivered many titled lectures at a variety of universities around the world.

Serge Przedborski, MD, PhD is the Page and William Black Professor of Neurology. He holds a joint appointment in the Departments of Neurology, Pathology and Cell Biology and is the Co-Director of the Center for Motor Neuron Biology and Disease and a faculty member of the Center for Parkinson's disease (PD) and Other Movement Disorders at Columbia University. Dr. Przedborski attended medical school at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, and did his internship and residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the ULB-Erasme Academic Medical Center, Belgium. He then did a fellowship in movement disorders with Dr. Stanley Fahn at Columbia University, where he became Assistant Professor of Neurology in 1991.

The research conducted in Dr. Przedborski's laboratory is geared toward unraveling the molecular basis of neurodegeneration and devising therapeutic strategies to hamper the processes that cause neuronal death, the source of many debilitating disorders. In keeping with this goal, to what extent and by which mechanisms do cell-autonomous and non-cell autonomous deleterious processes contribute to the demise of specific subpopulation of neurons in neurodegenerative disorders, such as PD represent a main line of research in his laboratory. These research efforts are supported by federal grants from both NIH and the DoD and by private agencies including the Parkinson's Disease Foundation, the Thomas Hartman Foundation, and MDA's Wings Over Wall Street. Dr. Przedborski is a Senior Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience and an Associate Editor of Movement Disorders.

Robert Burke, MD received his Bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire and his Medical Degree at Cornell University Medical College in New York. He did his residency at Neurological Institute, Columbia University and he is Board Certified by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry (Neurology).

Dr. Burke's research focus is on basic neuroscience related to the cause and pathogenesis of movement disorders, particularly Parkinson's Disease. He demonstrated that a genetically programmed form of cell death, called apoptosis, occurs in dopaminergic neurons of the substantia nigra. This form of cell death can be induced in models of injury to explain the pathogenesis of parkinsonism and other movement disorders, including Huntington's Disease. Ongoing efforts are aimed towards understanding this form of cell death at the molecular level, and preventing it with growth factors. Dr. Burke's clinical research includes important work in dystonia and the tardive dyskinesias, and has led to the first descriptions of the delayed-onset dystonias and tardive dystonia. Dr. Burke's publications have appeared in The Journal of Neuroscience, The Journal of Comparative Neurology, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), Nature Neuroscience and other leading neuroscience journals Dr. Burke's laboratory website can be directly visited.

Dr. Burke has been involved with the World Parkinson Coalition from its inception as an active Board member as well as a presenter at the first two World Parkinson Congresses.

Marie-Francoise Chesselet, MD, PhD  received her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Paris VI, in France. She completed her internship at the Hopital de l'Hotel Dieu in Paris and her PhD thesis in the laboratory of Jacques Glowinski at the College of France. After obtaining a position at the CNRS, she joined the laboratory of Ann Graybiel at MIT and the laboratory of Michael Bronstein at the NIH as a Visiting Scientist. She held faculty appointments at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and the University of Pennsylvania before joining UCLA as the Charles H. Markham Professor of Neurology in 1996. She is currently Chair of the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also Director of the APDA Advanced Center for Parkinson's Disease Research, Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence for Parkinson's Disease Research and the Center for Gene Environment Studies in Parkinson's Disease at UCLA.

Patricia Davies  has been a professional conference organizer for about 35 years. She originally worked in the private sector in London, and before moving to the US in 1991 was managing director of Conference Associates and Services Ltd., a company which specialized in the organization of large international conferences, primarily medical. In 1991 she moved to Washington DC to take up a position with the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund as manager of the office which organizes the organizations’ Annual and Spring meetings. She retired from this position in 2007 and was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease early in 2009.

On the assumption that keeping as active as possible keeps the disease at bay, or at the very least is a distraction, Pat is now involved with many different non profit organizations. Until recently she was Chair of Children of Uganda, which supports several hundred orphans and vulnerable children in Uganda. She is currently helping to organize the Tour of Light, when a group of the children will travel to the US in January/February 2012 for a fundraising tour featuring African song and dance. She is on the board of Georgetown Ministry Center which provides services for homeless people in DC, and she leads a knitting group for the homeless, prepares lunch for them at least once a week, and is organizing a three week winter shelter.  With the dog that she adopted to ensure she gets out and walks several times a day, she (and the dog) volunteer at People Animals Love (PAL) in the Reading with Dogs program, designed to help children improve their reading skills. Soon after her diagnosis Pat joined a Parkinson’s Support Group and participated in a couple of clinical studies at UMD. She organized a team to participate in the recent National Parkinson Foundation Moving Day, and the "Movers and Shakers” raised over $8,000. She attended the WPC 2010 in Glasgow and offered her services to assist. She was thrilled to be invited to join the Steering Committee of the WPC 2013, and is equally delighted to be invited to join the Board of Directors. She looks forward to working with other members of the Parkinson’s Community, and has a particular interest in resources for individuals who are coping with the disease alone.

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A. Jon Stoessl, CM, MD, FRCPC, Professor and Head of Neurology and Director of the Pacific Parkinson's Research Centre and National Parkinson Foundation Centre of Excellence at UBC and Vancouver Coastal Health, and been tapped to co-chair the third World Parkinson Congress. He holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Parkinson's Disease and directs the CIHR Team in Parkinson's and a Pacific Alzheimer Research Foundation Centre grant on Overlap Syndromes Resulting in Dementia. 

When asked about his appointment as co-chair of the WPC 2013, he said, "I am delighted to co-chair the third World Parkinson Congress and look forward to an outstanding program and experience for the delegates who join us in Montreal, Canada in October 2013. I expect the WPC 2013 to follow the success of the first two Congresses with a high caliber scientific program designed to bring the community together and to build excitement around the latest research from both basic and clinical scientists as well as rehab specialists. I also see this as the perfect space to highlight ongoing programs that are helping people with Parkinson's take charge of their lives and live more independently.  Working together as a community, we can make advances more quickly.  I am sure the WPC 2013 will draw record numbers because of the excitement generated in Glasgow and because of the beauty and charm of Montreal. I look forward to welcoming delegates to Canada." 

Dr. Stoessl has worked closely with the Parkinson Society Canada as their past Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for and is well respected among his peers and the community of people living with Parkinson's across Canada. When she learned of Dr. Stoessl's co-chair position, Joyce Gordon, President and CEO of Parkinson Society Canada said, "Dr. Stoessl is a recognized leader in the Canadian and International Parkinson community and Parkinson Society Canada is delighted to have him at the helm with Dr. Fahn for WPC 2013."   

Dr. Stoessl sits on the editorial boards of numerous journal and has served on a number of scientific advisory boards, including Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Ontario Mental Health Foundation (Chair), Huntington Society of Canada, Tourette Syndrome Association and National Parkinson Foundation. and currently chairs the Interdisciplinary Adjudication Committee of the Canada Research Chairs program. In 2007, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada . Dr. Stoessl's research involves the use of positron emission tomography to study Parkinson's disease and related disorders, including the use of imaging as a biomarker, the basis for complications of treatment and mechanisms of the placebo effect. He has published more than 220 papers and book chapters.

Elizabeth "Eli" Pollard has been with the World Parkinson Coalition from its inception and helped steer the organization from it's sole purpose, of hosting a triennial global Congress on Parkinson's disease to it's more meaningful place in the community today, one which acts as a hub for many of the global organizations to connect and intersect either online, on teleconferences, or in person at the Congresses. Eli is thrilled with the opportunity to meet the members of the community, to help build the WPC Legacy, and to watch as we move closer to closer the doors of the organization as researchers, clinicians, and people with Parkinson's bring us closer to finding a cause and cure for Parkinson's disease.

Eli graduated from Michigan State University with a Bachelor's degree, and the School for International Training with a Masters degree in International Management. She spent most of her 20s living outside the US in Zimbabwe, Switzerland, and Japan with lengthy stays for research or pleasure in India, China, and Thailand. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two rambunctious children who keep her on her toes when she's not already knee deep in WPC work!