2019 Scientific Meeting
Plenary Bios
Walter Koroshetz, MD
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Walter J. Koroshetz, M.D., was selected Director of NINDS on June 11, 2015. Dr. Koroshetz joined NINDS in 2007 as Deputy Director, and he served as Acting Director from October 2014 through June 2015. Previously, he served as Deputy Director of NINDS under Dr. Story Landis. Together, they directed program planning and budgeting, and oversaw the scientific and administrative functions of the Institute. He has held leadership roles in a number of NIH and NINDS programs including the NIH’s BRAIN Initiative, the Traumatic Brain Injury Center collaborative effort between the NIH intramural program and the Uniformed Health Services University, and the multi-year work to develop and establish the NIH Office of Emergency Care Research to coordinate NIH emergency care research and research training.
Helene Langevin, MD CM
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
Dr. Langevin was appointed as Director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health in November 2018. As NCCIH director, Dr. Langevin will oversee the federal government’s lead agency for scientific research on the diverse medical and health care systems, practices and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine. With an annual budget of approximately $142 million, NCCIH funds and conducts research to help answer important scientific and public health questions about natural products, mind and body practices and pain management. The center also coordinates and collaborates with other research institutes and federal programs on research into complementary and integrative health.
Dr. Langevin comes to NIH from the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, jointly based at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston. She has served as director of the Osher Center and professor-in-residence of medicine at Harvard Medical School since 2012. She has also served as a visiting professor of neurological sciences at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, Burlington.
As the principal investigator of several NIH-funded studies, Dr. Langevin’s research interests have centered around the role of connective tissue in low back pain and the mechanisms of acupuncture, manual and movement-based therapies. Her more recent work has focused on the effects of stretching on inflammation resolution mechanisms within connective tissue.
Dr. Langevin received an M.D. degree from McGill University, Montreal. She completed her post-doctoral research fellowship in neurochemistry at the MRC Neurochemical Pharmacology Unit in Cambridge, England, and a residency in internal medicine and fellowship in endocrinology and metabolism at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
Jose Moron-Concepcion, PhD
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis Pain Center
I am an Associate Professor of Anesthesiology. My primary appointment is in the Washington University Pain Center in the basic research section.
After completing my PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Barcelona (Spain) I was awarded a fellowship to join the intramural program at NIDA to work in the laboratory of Dr Toni Shippenberg, a pioneer in the field of opioid pharmacology. Then, I continued my postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Lakshmi Devi at Mount Sinai, where I continued my studies on the mechanisms of opioid dependence. After completing my training, I moved to Columbia University in New York, where I was on the faculty of the Department of Anesthesiology for 6 years. I finally joined the faculty of Washington University on October 1, 2015.
Research in my laboratory is focused in understanding the mechanisms underlying opioid addiction and the intersection with pain. In addition, my lab is interested in elucidating mechanisms underlying pain in the central nervous system and in the periphery
