2026 AAN President's Award Recipient - Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz

Dr. Walter J. Koroshetz, the 2026 AAN President's Award recipient, reflects on a career shaped by curiosity sparked in a Brooklyn library—where a massive psychiatry textbook first revealed the brain’s physical underpinnings. Though he initially trained in internal medicine, a deep intellectual pull toward neurology, fueled by mentor C. Miller Fisher, led him to Mass General and a path that would eventually take him to the helm of the NINDS. As director, Koroshetz championed the Brain Initiative, calling it neuroscience’s equivalent of the Human Genome Project—a transformative effort to map, monitor, and modulate neural circuits, with profound implications for treating disorders from Parkinson’s to depression. He warns, however, that the field’s greatest bottleneck isn’t science, but people: only 70 neurologists apply annually for the NINDS’s flagship career development award, despite a global surge in neuroscience talent. He urges neurologists—academic and private practice alike—to embrace research as a shared mission, even if not through formal grants, and cautions that academic medical centers risk sidelining research amid corporate pressures. At 65, Koroshetz is not retiring but actively seeking new ways to advance treatments, driven by the belief that neurology’s future is not just promising—it’s urgent.