Robert A. Stern, PhD

Biography

Dr. Robert Stern is Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Anatomy & Neurobiology at Boston University (BU) Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. He is an internationally recognized expert on the neurodegenerative disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and is Co-Founder and Director of Clinical Research for the BU CTE Center. From 2010-2019, he was the Director of the Clinical Core of the BU Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (funded by U.S. National Institutes of Health, NIH). The focus of Dr. Stern’s research is to develop methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life and to better understand the risk factors for later-life neurological consequences of repetitive mild traumatic brain injuries in former American football players, soccer players, and other contact sport athletes. He was the principal investigator of the first grant funded by NIH to study CTE, for the DETECT Study. Subsequently, he was the lead investigator of the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project, a NIH-funded, multi-center, 8-year study (2015-2023) to develop methods of detecting and diagnosing CTE during life, including the development and examination of neuroimaging and fluid biomarkers, establishing and validating diagnostic criteria for Traumatic Encephalopathy Syndrome (TES), and studying potential risk factors of the disease. He is currently one of the principal investigators for the DIAGNOSE CTE Research Project-II, a NIH-funded multi-center study expanding upon the original DIAGNOSE study, examining new potential blood and imaging biomarkers to diagnose CTE in living patients and differentiate CTE from similar diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Dr. Stern was also the principal investigator (currently co-investigator) of the Head Impact & Trauma Surveillance Study (HITSS; also funded by NIH), a longitudinal online assessment of over 6000 former American football players and soccer players (age 40 years or older), who participated at any level. Dr. Stern’s other major area of funded research includes the diagnosis and treatment of AD. He has had continuous research funding for over 35 years, from NIH, the U.S. Department of Defense, foundations, and industry. Dr. Stern was a member of the NFL Players Association’s Mackey-White Player Health and Safety Committee as well as the court-appointed Medical Science Committee of the NCAA Concussion Settlement. He has over 250 peer-reviewed publications, has been a member of several medical journal editorial boards, and is the co-editor of two books: Sports Neurology, part of the Handbook of Clinical Neurology series; and the Oxford Handbook of Adult Cognitive Disorders. He is a licensed clinical neuropsychologist and has developed several widely used neuropsychological tests, including the Neuropsychological Assessment Battery (NAB). He is a Fellow of the American Neuropsychiatric Association and the National Academy of Neuropsychology. Throughout his career Dr. Stern has received several honors and recently was awarded the 2025 Leon Thal Prize in Recognition of Research Excellence by the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health.