Amit Bar-Or

Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Chair
Professor, Department of Neurology
Chief, Division of Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders
Director, Centre for Neuroinflammation and Experimental Therapeutics
University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)
Philadelphia, PA | USA

Dr. Bar-Or holds the Melissa and Paul Anderson President’s Distinguished Chair at the University of Pennsylvania, where he Directs the Centre for Neuroinflammation and Experimental Therapeutics (CNET) and serves as Chief of the Division of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and related disorders. His clinical focus is on MS and other neuroinflammatory disorders, in both adults and children for which he is cross-appointed at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and co-directs the age-span program in MS and related disorders that ensures seamless pediatric through adulthood transition of care, and provides a focus on education and research.

Following an undergraduate degree at McMaster University, Dr. Bar-Or earned his medical degree at McGill University, Montreal, Québec. He completed an Internal Medicine Internship and Neurology residency  at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard Medical School (HMS), followed by postdoctoral clinical fellowship training at the MGH and laboratory fellowship training in cellular and molecular neuroimmunology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Center for Neurologic Disease, also completing the  Clinical Investigator Training Program (CITP) leading to a master’s degree in Medical Science and Translational Research at HMS and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with additional training through the Harvard School of Public Health Certificate Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He then joined the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University, where he attained tenured Professor rank in 2012 and subsequently also served as the Institute’s Associate Director for Translational Reseacrh prior to arriving at Penn.

Dr. Bar-Or’s research focuses on neuroimmune health and central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory diseases across the age span. He runs a cellular and molecular Neuroimmunology lab directed at understanding general principles of immune regulation and immune-neural interactions, and their contributions to inflammation, injury and repair of the human central nervous system. Major contributions have included discovery of cellular mechanisms by which human T cell, B cell, and myeloid cell subsets modulate one another and interact with brain cells; elucidating the mode-of-action of experimental therapies; advancing the development of clinically meaningful biomarkers;  and developing precision medicine strategies for autoimmune and CNS inflammatory diseases.

Dr. Bar-Or is passionate about education and mentoring, having trained over 80 students at both pre- and post-doctoral levels with emphasis on clinician-scientist trainees in neuroimmunology and autoimmunity. He has published over 350 peer-reviewed publications with an H factor of 115, led multiple national and international collaborative research initiatives, and is considered a highly sought-after speaker. For his work. Dr. Bar-Or has received multiple awards including the 2021 prestigious Barancik Prize for Research Innovation in MS. He is past-President of the Canadian Network of MS Clinics (CNMSC) and of the International Society of Neuroimmunology (ISNI) where he is a lifetime Honorary member. He served on the Board of Directors of the Americas Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ACTRIMS) and the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS), where he continues as a long-standing member of the Education Committee. He currently serves on the International Advisory Committee on Clinical Trials in Multiple Sclerosis and on the Steering Committee of the NIH Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) and is co-PI of the NIH Autoimmunity Center of Excellence (ACE), and member of the Leadership Council of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at the University of Pennsylvania.