Craig Blackstone MD, PhD

Craig Blackstone is Senior Investigator in the Neurogenetics Branch at the NINDS and Senior Advisor for the NIH MD-PhD Partnership Training Program.  He received BS and MS degrees in 1987 from the University of Chicago, where he was awarded the Sigma Xi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for his work with Dr. Donald F. Steiner.  He was awarded a MSTP Fellowship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he completed MD and PhD degrees in 1994.  His graduate studies in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Huganir were on the structure and regulation of glutamate receptors in the CNS, for which he received the David Israel Macht Research Award.  After a neurology residency in the Harvard-Longwood Neurology Program, Dr. Blackstone pursued clinical fellowship training in movement disorders at the Massachusetts General Hospital and postdoctoral research training with Dr. Morgan Sheng at Harvard Medical School and MIT.  In 2001, Dr. Blackstone joined the NINDS Clinical Neurosciences Program, where he continues to oversee an active neurogenetics clinic.  His laboratory research focuses on the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying inherited neurological disorders, particularly hereditary spastic paraplegias.  He has served on the Executive Council of the American Neurological Association (ANA) and is currently Director of the ANA's Annual Translational and Clinical Research Course in the Neurosciences as well as Chair of the ANA's Technology and Communications Task Force.   He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Spastic Paraplegia Foundation and the Board of Consulting Editors for the Journal of Clinical Investigation.  In 2012, Dr. Blackstone received the NIH Director's Ruth L. Kirschstein Mentoring Award, the NIH's highest mentoring honor.