Our next membership meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 15th and will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the Headliners Club by invitation only. Dean Claudia Lucchinetti, M.D. of The University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School, will speak.

Claudia F. Lucchinetti, M.D., will serve as dean of Dell Medical School and senior vice president for medical affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. In these roles, she oversees Dell Med’s work in education, research and clinical care, including operations at UT Health Austin, Dell Med’s clinical practice, and leads the university’s comprehensive health care strategy. She also holds the Frank and Charmaine Denius Distinguished Dean’s Chair in Medical Leadership.

A neurologist with specialization in neuroimmunology and experimental neuropathy, she is an internationally recognized expert in the clinical and neuropathological underpinnings of the broad spectrum of inflammatory demyelinating diseases, including multiple sclerosis, neuromyelitis optica and MOG antibody associated disease.

Lucchinetti comes to Austin from Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where she is dean of clinical and translational science and director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Science. She also serves as chair of the Department of Neurology and chair of the neurology enterprise subspecialty council, overseeing strategic and operational responsibilities across Mayo Clinic sites nationwide. She is the Eugene and Marcia Applebaum Professor of Neurosciences and a professor of neurology at Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, and she serves on the Mayo Clinic Board of Governors and Board of Trustees.

She earned her medical degree from Rush Medical College in Chicago and, after an internship at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center, completed a neurology residency and a fellowship in neuroimmunology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science. As a Mayo Foundation Scholar, she trained in experimental neuropathology with Hans Lassmann, M.D., at the Brain Research Institute in Vienna, Austria.