{"id":6818,"date":"2026-02-04T09:42:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T14:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/?p=6818"},"modified":"2026-02-04T10:24:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T15:24:01","slug":"mentor-spotlight-david-greer-md","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/2026\/02\/04\/mentor-spotlight-david-greer-md\/","title":{"rendered":"Mentor Spotlight: David Greer, MD"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><em><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/medstudentresearch\/files\/2026\/02\/Davidgreer-492x636.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"276\" height=\"356\" class=\" wp-image-6820 alignleft\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/files\/2026\/02\/Davidgreer-492x636.png 492w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/files\/2026\/02\/Davidgreer-792x1024.png 792w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/files\/2026\/02\/Davidgreer-768x993.png 768w, https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/files\/2026\/02\/Davidgreer.png 1060w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 276px) 100vw, 276px\" \/><strong>David Greer, MD, Chair and Chief of Neurology<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.bu.edu\/David.Greer\">Dr. David Greer<\/a> is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and the Richard B. Slifka Chief of Neurology at Boston Medical Center. He has been a neurointensivist since 2001, having trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he began his career. He was then Vice Chair at Yale from 2010-17, before joining Boston University and Boston Medical Center in 2017. Dr. Greer did not originally envision a career in research, but growing frustration with numerous unanswered and neglected questions motivated him to take action by asking, &#8220;why not me?&#8221;. He began modestly by creating a database and compiling records of patients in coma, which over the years expanded into a long-term commitment and ultimately became his life&#8217;s work.<\/p>\n<div>Dr. Greer&#8217;s research includes \u201cneuroprognostication,\u201d predicting which patients will regain consciousness after severe brain injury (for example, cardiac arrest, stroke, hemorrhage), and determining the likelihood of functional recovery (or not). He also studies brain death determination, a diagnosis that must be made correctly 100% of the time, in a field in which there are surprisingly a great number of unanswered questions.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Over the years, he&#8217;s mentored and worked with numerous students, usually resulting in at least an abstract at a meeting and several publications as first author. Some of his current mentees include Neha Maduhala, M3, who is working on a couple projects with his lab, including machine learning methods to determine which aspects of clinical testing help most with predicting outcome after cardiac arrest. She is also looking at trends of neuron specific enolase (NSE) as a better predictor of outcome than single values on single days, which she\u2019ll be presenting at the Society of Critical Care Medicine conference this spring. Kimberly Torres, M2, is currently looking at gender differences in outcomes after cardiac arrest, controlling for comorbidities.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><em><strong>Dr. Greer on mentorship:\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;It means a great deal. It is a way that I help people be excited about neurology, as well as a medical career in general. Scientific mentorship is one thing &#8211; asking a research question and hopefully getting an answer, but life and career mentorship is even more rewarding. I like to think I get back more than I give!&#8221; His advice to mentees is to remember &#8221; you get out of it what you put into it. I\u2019m not going to hold your hand or do it for you, but I\u2019ll be here to guide you any time and any way you need me.&#8221;<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David Greer, MD, Chair and Chief of Neurology Dr. David Greer is Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine and the Richard B. Slifka Chief of Neurology at Boston Medical Center. He has been a neurointensivist since 2001, having trained at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he began his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24822,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24822"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6818"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6839,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6818\/revisions\/6839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/medstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}