Alon Y. Avidan

The Guest Editor of this issue of Seminars in Neurology is Alon Avidan, M.D., M.P.H. Dr. Avidan is Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is the Director of the UCLA Neurology Residency Program, the Medical Director of the Neurology Clinic, and the Associate Director of the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center.

Dr. Avidan is returning as the Guest Editor of Seminars in Neurology. He was the Guest Editor of the issue on “Introduction to Sleep and Its Disorders” published in September of 2004 and the Guest Editor of “Sleep and Neurological Practice” published in February of 2005.

Dr. Avidan received his Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of California and then attended Medical School at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC. He obtained a Master of Public Health from George Washington School of Public Health. Dr. Avidan did an Internship at the Loma Linda University Medical Center and his Neurology Residency at Georgetown University Medical Center, where he was Chief Resident. He followed this with a Fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Sleep Disorders at the Cleveland Clinic under Drs. Dudley Dinner and Nancy Foldvary-Schaefer. Dr. Avidan began his academic career in the Department of Neurology at the University of Michigan and is now at UCLA.

He is an incredible educator. He was the Director of the Course on the Neurology of Sleep at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology and the Director of a Course that he designed on Sleep Medicine Cases for the Neurologist at the Annual Meeting for the past 4 years. He is a very popular speaker and presents regularly to not only the American Academy of Neurology, but also at the meetings of the American College of Chest Physicians and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. He also participates in the American College of Chest Physicians Sleep Medicine Board Review Course. He is a co-author with Dr. Zee of The Handbook of Sleep Medicine, which was published by Lippincott Williams and Wilkins in 2006 and is co-author of Review of Sleep Medicine with Dr. Barkoukis published by Butterworth & Heinemann in 2007. In addition, he has published several peer-reviewed manuscripts, book chapters, abstracts, and electronic publications. He is a co-author of a unique educational module, SAFER (Sleep, Alertness, and Fatigue Education in Residency), designed to teach residents and medical school administrators about sleep deprivation during residency training and provide education about countermeasures.

He is working on the first UCLA-based sleep medicine fellowship program and is developing a Sleep Neurology Subspecialty Clinic. Dr. Avidan is tireless in his devotion to the advancement of our understanding of sleep and the care of patients with sleep disorders. As is so often our experience with the patient who presents for the evaluation of a nonsleep complaint, they often are as distressed or more distressed by their difficulty falling or staying asleep, and it is a sleep disorder that is affecting their coping with their neurologic disorder. We are terribly grateful to Dr. Avidan and to all of the contributors to this issue of Seminars in Neurology for their expertise and guidance in caring for our patients.