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Michael Brainin

World Stroke Organisation

Professor Brainin was appointed in 2000 full Professor of Clinical Neurology and Director and Chair of the Department of Clinical Neurosciences and Prevention at the Danube University in Krems, Austria. From 1994-2016 he acted as Chair and Director of the Neurological Department of the University Hospital Tulln. In 1997 he set up the first stroke unit in Austria at his institution.

His research focus is on cerebrovascular diseases including acute therapy, recovery and cognition. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed, Pub med listed articles. His h-index is 40, he has over 8.000 citations.

He has been an invited lecturer and chairperson to more than 1.000 international conferences. He has published and edited several books, among them the Textbook of Stroke Medicine (with WD Heiss, Cambridge Univ Press, 2nd edition 2015). 

From 2012-2014 he was President of the European Stroke Organization (ESO). In 2015, he was elected President Elect of the World Stroke Organisation (WSO) and is due to take office in 2018. Since 2014 he is elected full Board Member of the European Academy of Neurology. He acted as chairman of the WSO Education Committee (2008-2017) for which he has co-directed teaching programmes in many regions of the world. Since 2008 he is editor-in-chief of the World Stroke Academy. He directs several postgraduate teaching programmes at his university, among them the WSO supported ESO European Master’s Programme in Stroke Medicine, currently attended by medical doctors and neurologists from 23 countries. 

He serves as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Neurology, also as Senior Consulting Editor for ‘Stroke. He serves on the Editorial Boards of the International Journal of Stroke, the European Stroke Journal, Neuroepidemiology, the Journal of Neurological Sciences, and Frontiers in Neurology. 

Professor Brainin is an Honorary Member of the ESO and International Fellow of the American Stroke Association and Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology. He received several awards, such as the Marinescu Award 2015 from the Romanian Society of Neurology and Honorary Doctorates from Hanoi University, Vietnam, and from the University of Cluj, Romania, an honorary professorship from Zhengzhou University, as well as honorary memberships of the French Neurological Society, Hungarian Stroke Society and Indian Stroke Society.