Sports Neurology

Brian Hainline, MD is the first chief medical officer of the NCAA and oversees their Sport Science Institute. For more than 30 years, Dr. Hainline has been actively involved in sports medicine. He has served on the New York State Athletic Commission, the United States Olympic Committee’s Sports Medicine Committee and was a founding member of the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Neurology Sports Neurology Section, where he serves as chair. He has been instrumental in the development of health and safety standards in tennis, both nationally and internationally. He was chief medical officer of the U.S. Open Tennis Championships for 16 years, and then served as the first chief medical officer of the United States Tennis Association before moving to the NCAA.

Dr. Robert Stern is Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Anatomy & Neurobiology at Boston University School of Medicine, where he is also Director of the Clinical Core of the BU Alzheimer’s Disease Center, and Director of Clinical Research for the BU CTE Center. A major focus of his research involves the long-term effects of repetitive head impacts in athletes, including the neurodegenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). He is the lead co-principal investigator of the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project, a 7-year NIH-funded multi-center, longitudinal study to develop methods of diagnosing CTE during life as well as examining potential risk factors of the disease. Dr. Stern’s other major area of funded research includes the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. He has also published on various aspects of cognitive assessment and is the senior author of many widely used neuropsychological tests. He has received numerous NIH and other national grants and he is a Fellow of both the American Neuropsychiatric Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology.