Kyle Blackburn, MD
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Dr. Blackburn is an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas TX. He received his medical degree from the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and completed his neurology residency at UT Southwestern. He then completed a fellowship in neuroimmunology at UT Southwestern, where he received training from Dr. Ben Greenberg. During his fellowship, Dr. Blackburn was a James T Lubin Fellow, and he launched the Comprehensive Outcome Registry Exploring Transverse Myelitis (CORE TM) study, a registry collecting patient reported outcome measures on adult and pediatric patients with transverse myelitis and acute flaccid myelitis.

Cynthia Wang, MD
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Dr. Cynthia Wang received her medical degree from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas and completed a pediatrics and pediatric neurology residency at Mott Children’s Hospital, University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dr. Wang was a James T. Lubin Fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Benjamin Greenberg at The University of Texas Southwestern and Children’s Health. She is now an assistant professor in the departments of Pediatrics and Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern. Her primary area of interest is immune-mediated brain disorders including ADEM and autoimmune encephalitis. She is conducting a prospective, longitudinal study on acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) to identify the clinical characteristics, treatment methods, and follow-up interventions that are associated with better and worse patient-centered outcomes.

Ruchika Prakash, PhD
The Ohio State University

Dr. Ruchika Prakash is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the Ohio State University. She is a licensed clinical psychologist who has been doing research on lifestyle interventions in people with MS for the last 15 years. She is the Director of the Clinical Neuroscience Lab where she works with PhD students, undergraduate students, and post-doctoral associates to better understand how physical activity training and mindfulness meditation helps improve cognition, reduce depression and anxiety, and impact brain plasticity in individuals with MS. She has published over 75 peer-reviewed journal articles, and her research is funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and the National Institutes of Health. She is also a member of the Psychosocial Wellness Group at the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and frequently presents her research on topics of psychosocial wellness to various public audiences. She received the “Rising Star Designation” given by the Association for Psychological Science in 2013 and the Springer Early Career Achievement in Research on Adult Development and Aging by American Psychological Association in 2016.