Professional Position: Professor of Neurology and of Public Health Sciences, Chief of Neuromuscular Division, Executive Director of the ALS Center
Company: The University of Miami
Location: Miami, FL
Michael Benatar, MBChB, MS, DPhil, is a professor of neurology; the Walter Bradley Chair in ALS Research; Executive Director of the ALS Center; Chief of Neuromuscular Division; and Vice Chair for Clinical & Translational Research in the Department of Neurology at the University of Miami.
Dr. Benatar obtained his medical degree at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and his doctorate in neuroscience while a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. After completing residency and fellowship training at Harvard, he obtained formal training in research methodology through a Master’s in the Science of Clinical Research degree while a faculty member at Emory. He runs an active clinical/translational research program focused on biomarker and therapy development for ALS and myasthenia gravis.
He leads the Pre-Symptomatic Familial ALS (Pre-fALS) study, which he initiated in 2007, and the CReATe Consortium, a 35-center network focused on therapy development for ALS and related disorders. Dr. Benatar is known internationally for his pioneering work in defining the field of pre-symptomatic ALS, including discovery of the first biomarker of pre-symptomatic disease that has been critical to the design and initiation of the first pre-symptomatic ALS trial. He has also been a thought leader in challenging existing paradigms for pre-clinical therapeutic studies; shaping how we conceptualize and use biomarkers for therapy development and championing the use of enrichment strategies in ALS trial design.
Dr. Benatar was the first recipient of the ALS Association’s TREAT ALS Clinical Research Fellowship (2006). He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles as well as several books, including Analytic Neurology: Examining the Evidence for Clinical Practice, and Neuromuscular Disease: Evidence and Analysis in Clinical Neurology. He has remained active in Association activities over the years, including serving since 2021 as a valuable member on the ALS Association Research Committee.
