- Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Professor, Department of Neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Amit Bar-Or is the inaugural Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Professor of Neurology, Chief of the Multiple Sclerosis Division, and Director of the Center for Neuroinflammation and Experimental Therapeutics (CNET) at the Perelman School of Medicine. He studied medicine at McGill University and completed neurology residency and neuroimmunology fellowship training at Harvard and MIT, spending nearly two decades as a clinician-scientist at the Montreal Neurological Institute before joining Penn in 2017.
Dr. Bar-Or’s laboratory has fundamentally reshaped the field of MS by demonstrating that B cells contribute to MS pathogenesis through antibody-independent mechanisms, providing the rationale for B cell–depleting therapies that are now standard of care. His group continues to investigate how B cells, T cells, and CNS-resident populations interact to drive relapses and progression, with active translational programs in biomarker discovery and emerging therapeutics.
Dr. Bar-Or co-directs the CHOP-Penn Age-Span NeuroImmune Program ensuring seamless pediatric-to-adult transition of care, serves as President of the International Society of Neuroimmunology, and is one of the world’s most influential MS scientists. He is a senior leader within the Penn Colton Center for Autoimmunity and the Institute for Immunology and Immune Health.
