We are a four-year categorical program, with eight positions per year. During the PGY1 year, residents complete eight months of internal medicine (as required by the ABPN), but spend the remaining four months of the year on Neurology rotations, including an introduction to our inpatient services, outpatient clinics, future continuity clinic patients, epilepsy/EEG interpretation, and a wide choice of electives. Interns are paired with both resident and faculty mentors on arrival and are encouraged to get a head start on research projects. This early integration into the UF neurology community allows residents the opportunity to maximize their education, feel at home in our department, and make well-informed decisions about subspecialty career plans.

UF Neurology residents care for a broad population of patients at our two affiliated teaching hospitals: Shands/UF Health and the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center, as well as the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases. Within these settings, residents see patients on multiple inpatient services, outpatient subspecialty clinics, and their own continuity clinics. This comprehensive exposure to many different neurological disorders ensures that residents are well prepared for independent practice after graduation. Understanding the environment in which we practice and our patients live has measurable benefits for patient care, and our residency training includes a longitudinal curriculum to learn the impact of local socioeconomic, demographic, and cultural factors on health and illness. Residents also have the opportunity to give back to our community by providing neurological care on the UF Mobile Outreach Clinic (https://outreach.med.ufl.edu/).

Residents have a great deal of flexibility in their elective choices, beginning with the PGY1 year. There are also many supplemental conferences and activities across a wide variety of interests, such as advanced simulation training for those interested in neurocritical care or participation in deep brain stimulation cases in the operating room. Residents have the opportunity to individualize their training by participating in tracks that provide a supplementary experience to the core residency clinical education, including the research academician track and the medical education track. One of the highlights of our residency is the standing weekly meeting between residents and program leadership to discuss resident programmatic feedback. All programs have opportunities for improvement, and working with the residents to craft their ideal program is one of greatest sources of satisfaction we have as medical educators.

Dr. Wilson is a clinician-educator who has enthusiastically served as the UF Neurology Residency Program Director since 2015. After earning a doctoral degree studying presenilin proteins in neurodegenerative diseases, her career focus shifted and she pursued medical school, neurology residency, and vascular neurology fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her clinical focus is on inpatient stroke neurology, but a majority of her time is spent in the educational realm. She also serves as the program director of the stroke fellowship and the departmental Associate Chair of Education, and is active in the local and national graduate medical education community. She has been granted Residency-Fellowship Program Director and AB Baker Teacher Recognition Awards from the AAN, and is the President-Elect of the AAN Consortium of Neurology Program Directors.

Dr. Rawls is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Florida College of Medicine. After earning her bachelor’s degree in biology from Duke University and a master’s degree in aging and neuroscience from the University of South Florida, she receivedher medical degree from the University of Florida in 2014. After medical school, she completed her neurology residency at the Medical University of South Carolina. Dr. Rawls then pursued a clinical movement disorders fellowship and post-doctoral research fellowship at Stanford University. She is board-certified in neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and currently licensed to practice medicine in both Florida and California.

Dr. Montalvo Perero, MD, is a board-certified neurologist, neurophysiologist and neuroimmunologist at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases at UF Health, serving as an assistant professor in the University of Florida Department of Neurology.
She received her medical degree in 2010 at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and completed her neurology residency in 2019 at Brown University. Following her residency, she completed her clinical neurophysiology fellowship in 2020 at Brown University and her autoimmune neurology fellowship in 2021 at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
She sees patients for a variety of neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica, transverse myelitis, optic neuritis, sarcoidosis, autoimmune encephalitis, autoimmune epilepsy and autoimmune ataxias.