Melissa Nirenberg, MD, PhD

• Parkinson's disease
• Parkinson-plus syndromes
• Diversity
• Genetics
• Biomarker
• Movement Disorders
• Neurodegeneration
• Neuropathology

Melissa J. Nirenberg, MD, PhD is a physician-scientist and movement disorders specialist with longstanding experience in basic, clinical, and translational research related to PD and other movement disorders. She has been the site PI or coinvestigator on numerous PD clinical trials, is an active member of the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society and the Parkinson Study Group, a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, and a prior member of the editorial board of Parkinsonism and Related Disorders. As a Professor of Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, she sees patients at the James J. Peters Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Medical Center and teaches and participates in research studies at Mount Sinai Hospital. She has extensive experience with recruitment, deep clinical phenotyping and sample collection from patients with PD and Parkinson’s plus syndromes, and other movement disorders. She discovered, named, and published the first paper in the literature about dopamine agonist withdrawal syndrome (DAWS). She has designed and implemented customized data collection strategies, case report forms, and REDCap databases for subjects with parkinsonian syndromes. She is the medical co-director of the Neuropathology Brain Bank at Mount Sinai Hospital, recruiting subjects for brain donation and facilitating neuropathological studies of PD, Parkinson’s plus syndromes, and other neurodegenerative disorders. She is currently PI on a Department of Veteran’s Affairs Merit Grant in which she is investigating the clinical and neuropathological phenotype of parkinsonism related to TBI. She is also a Local Site Investigator on the MJFF-sponsored Veterans Parkinson’s Disease Genetics (Vet-PD), in partnership with GP2 and the NIH.