Chair’s Message

Welcome to the UF Department of Neurology!We are a very collaborative and enthusiastic team comprised of more than 60 faculty physicians representing every neurology subspecialty, as well as preclinical faculty scholars positioned at the forefront of innovation and translational research and are rounded out by our dedicated administrative team that provides oversight and support to our triple-aimed mission of patient care, research, and medical education.

We are currently experiencing a very exciting time of growth and expansion illustrated by our department’s more than doubling in size since 2015. Together, we have created many new interdisciplinary programs including neurocritical care, TBI, multiple sclerosis, headache and ALS. Existing programs like stroke, neuromuscular, epilepsy, behavior and movement disorders continue to expand and thrive here at UF Health.

In addition to our 11 established centers of excellence, we are also fortunate to have two state-of-the-art, freestanding clinical facilities and three clinical trial sites (including the McKnight Brain Institute) aimed at showcasing our collective talent, excellence, and commitment to outstanding neurological care, research, and education. Together, we celebrated the opening of a new free-standing Neuromedicine Hospital in 2017 and the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases in 2019.

Through the excellent academic leadership and the hard work done by our education team, the neurology residency program has achieved a Top-15 ranking and the training program has now multiplied from 15 to 32 slots. Our neurology fellowship programs have also recently enjoyed expansion from 10 to 25 slots which now span across 10 unique neurological subspecialties. Through this commitment to provide outstanding medical education programs, we are proudly creating the future generation of neurologists and neuroscientists of tomorrow.

Our Department’s research funding has also more than doubled in all areas since 2015 (NIH, Foundation, Clinical Trials), and together we have over 100 ongoing investigator-initiated or human clinical trials. Our footprint in research, according to The Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, has experienced a meteoric rise and the number of new R, U and center of excellence grants has been truly astounding. In partnership with the Department of Neuroscience, we have achieved a Top-5 national ranking. We have also partnered to raise a considerable amount of philanthropic funding, which has been vital to the creation of new professorships in neurology, offering additional fellowship/graduate student opportunities, and providing critical neurological services to our patients without healthcare insurance or sufficient access to care.

Together, our commitment to the community has been unwavering, from the mobile neurology unit to direct outreach initiatives in churches and underserved communities. I am proud to share that members of our department collaborated & coalesced to create the college’s first Diversity Council. Together, we as a department have never hesitated in speaking and in amplifying our voices to advocate for each other.

We have also recently reimagined our Department’s administrative structure and continue working tirelessly to break down barriers to improved communication across the organization and among our teams, expand our clinical services and geographical footprint, and perhaps most importantly, always ensure we are asking and understanding of the ‘why’. Through these efforts we have together created a profound sense of purpose and meaning in all of our staff from our administrative, grants and clinical trials, and environmental teams.

At UF Neurology, we firmly believe that the patient is the sun and that interdisciplinary health care teams should orbit around the patient. We have clinical faculty and preclinical faculty working diligently together to advance treatments and understanding of neurological disease which in turn, allows us to continue “Learning as We Treat”.

I am so grateful and motivated to be part of this exceptionally talented team that has chosen to wholeheartedly embrace our collectively shared vision of ‘One UFNeurology’.

Michael Jaffee

Michael Jaffee, M.D., FAAN, FANA

Chair And Professor Of Neurology