Awards & Recognitions – January 2025
‘AZ Big Media’ Businesses to Watch
Barrow Neurological Institute has again been named one of “50 Arizona businesses to watch” by “AZ Big Media.” The “Az Business” magazine editorial board curates the list each year, noting companies that “are at the forefront of innovation and growth.” The 2025 list specifically highlights the Institute’s plans to explore six “mysteries of the mind”: movement and perception, emotion, neural plasticity, intelligence, memory, and consciousness.
NEALS Committee
Shafeeq Ladha, MD, director of the Gregory W. Fulton ALS and Neuromuscular Disease Center at Barrow, has been elected to serve a four-year term on the NEALS Executive Committee. NEALS, short for the Northeast ALS Consortium, plays a key role in most of the clinical trials for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in the United States. As an investigator member on the NEALS Executive Committee, Dr. Ladha will help guide the future direction of the organization and oversee other committees within the organization.
AANS Vesalius Award
Ali Tayebi-Meybodi, MD, has been awarded the Vesalius Prize by the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) for the third consecutive year—the first person to achieve such a streak in the award’s history. Dr. Tayebi-Meybodi is a fellow in the Loyal and Edith Davis Neurosurgical Research Laboratory under the mentorship of Mark Preul, MD. At the 2025 AANS Annual Scientific Meeting in April, Dr. Tayebi-Meybodi will present his award-winning abstract, “A Surgeon Beyond His Era: Neurosurgical Contributions of Eugène-Louis Doyen.” The project was co-authored by other fellows in Dr. Preul’s laboratory.
‘Neurosurgery’ Cover
“Neurosurgery,” a journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, selected an article from the Loyal and Edith Davis Neurosurgical Research Laboratory at Barrow for the cover of its February 2025 issue. The article, “Vesalius and His Manikin: An Enduring Influence on Modern Anatomic Teaching,” focuses on the anatomical “manikins” of Renaissance-era anatomist Andreas Vesalius. Thomas J. On, a Creighton University School of Medicine student and Barrow research intern, was the first author on the paper, under the mentorship of Director of Neurosurgery Research Mark Preul, MD.
DoD Synergistic Idea Award
The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded $3 million to a team of researchers, led by Barrow Neurological Institute, to delve into the underlying cause of the emotional, behavioral, and cognitive symptoms often seen in Parkinson’s disease. Barrow Associate Professors Fredric Manfredsson, PhD, and Ashley Stokes, PhD, are two of the four principal investigators who received the 2024 Parkinson’s Synergistic Idea Award. The investigators will combine their unique skill sets to test their overall hypothesis: that structural and functional changes to serotonin-producing neurons contribute to neuropsychiatric symptoms in Parkinson’s.