Education Program Leadership
S. Thomas Carmichael, MD, PhD
UCLA Neurology Department Chair
S. Thomas Carmichael is a neurologist and neuroscientist in the Departments of Neurology and of Neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Carmichael is Professor Chair of the Department of Neurology, co-Director of the UCLA Broad Stem Cell Center and co-Director of the Regenerative Medicine Theme in the David Geffen School of Medicine. He has active laboratory and clinical interests in stroke and neurorehabilitation and how the brain repairs from injury. He received his MD and PhD degrees from Washington University School of Medicine in 1993 and 1994, and completed a Neurology residency at Washington University School of Medicine, serving as Chief Resident. Dr. Carmichael was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute postdoctoral fellow at UCLA from 1998-2001. He has been on the UCLA faculty since 2001. Dr. Carmichael’s laboratory studies the molecular and cellular mechanisms of neural repair after stroke and other forms of brain injury. This research focuses on the processes of axonal sprouting and neural stem cell and progenitor responses after stroke, and on neural stem cell transplantation. Dr. Carmichael is an attending physician on the Neurorehabilitation and Stroke clinical services at UCLA.
Dr. Carmichael has published important papers on stroke recovery that have defined mechanisms of plasticity and repair. These include the fact that the stroke produces stunned circuits that limit recovery, but can be restored to normal functioning with newly applied experimental drugs. His work has identified a novel brain “growth program” that is activated by stroke and leads to the formation of new connections. These studies have also identified how this growth program changes with age, and how specific molecules in the aged brain block the formation of new connections and of recovery. This and other work has led to new directions in stroke therapeutics, including therapies with stem cell and tissue engineering applications. Dr. Carmichael is in the midst of stroke stem cell development applications with the FDA and with biotechnology companies.
Adrienne Keener, MD
Residency Program Director
Dr. Keener is a neurologist whose primary clinical focus is movement disorders. Currently, she is an Assistant Clinical Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, Department of Neurology and a member of the Movement Disorders Clinic. An honors graduate of University of California, San Diego, with a major in Cognitive Science, and an Alpha Omega Alpha graduate of the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. Dr. Keener was an intern in Medicine at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center, and a resident in Neurology in the Department of Neurology at UCLA where she served as Chief Resident. In 2016, she joined the faculty at UCLA where she participates in research and clinical care both at the UCLA Movement Disorders Clinic and at the West LA VA PADRECC (Parkinson’s Disease Research, Education, and Clinical Center). Her research interests include the epidemiology of Parkinson’s Disease, and interdisciplinary treatment approaches for movement disorders. Dr. Keener is also interested in medical education, specifically in the practice of Narrative Medicine and developing physician wellness for trainees. She joined the residency program at UCLA as the Associate Program Director in 2016.