Friday, December 18, 2009
Rochester, Minn. ― John Noseworthy, M.D., who moved into the president & CEO role at Mayo Clinic in November, conducted his first briefing with local media today.
Mayo Clinic began a planned leadership transition last May when its Board of Trustees elected Dr. Noseworthy to succeed Denis Cortese, M.D., as president and CEO of Mayo Clinic. Mayo has a long history of smooth leadership transitions starting with the Mayo brothers, and this succession process has been under way for more than a year. Dr. Cortese and Dr. Noseworthy worked together over the past seven months until Dr. Cortese’s retirement in November.
Dr. Noseworthy is a professor in the Department of Neurology and has served as medical director of the Mayo Clinic Department of Development and as vice chair of the Mayo Clinic Rochester Executive Board. He recently led the “Mayo Clinic in the Year 2020” task force to help establish long-term institutional direction.
Born in Melrose, Mass., he received the M.D. degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, completed his neurology training at Dalhousie University and the University of Western Ontario and a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School. In 1990, he joined Mayo Clinic, and served as chair of the Department of Neurology from 1997 to 2006.
Dr. Noseworthy specializes in multiple sclerosis, a field he contributed to for more than two decades in the design and conduct of controlled clinical trials receiving research funding from the Medical Research Council of Canada, the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society (USA) and the National Institutes of Health. He played a pivotal role in founding the Sylvia Lawry Centre for Multiple Sclerosis Research in Munich, Germany in 2001 for the purpose of advancing research into effective therapies for this illness. He is the author of more than 150 research papers, chapters and editorials and is the author or editor of several books including the three-volume textbook Neurological Therapeutics: Principles and Practice now in its second edition. From 2007 to 2009 he served as editor-in-chief for Neurology, the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
