Untitled Document

Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

Dr. Michael Pranzatelli, Professor and Division Chair
Specializing in Movement Disorders and Ataxia

Michael R. Pranzatelli, M.D., is Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics and Head of the Division of Child and Adolescent Neurology at the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine. He is also founder of the National Pediatric Myoclonus Center. A graduate of the Pennsylvania State University in Hershey, Dr. Pranzatelli completed his pediatric residency at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, and his pediatric neurology training at the University of Colorado. He also completed a three-year research fellowship in neuropharmacology at the University of Southern California’s Children’s Hospital. He is certified both by the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology with special qualification in Child Neurology. Previously, Dr. Pranzatelli was a faculty member at Columbia University in New York City and the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. As a clinician-scientist, he received the prestigious Young Investigator Award of the Child Neurology Society. He has been awarded over $3.5 million in federal, private, and institutional grants for his research on movement disorders, including a Clinical Investigator Development Award from the National Institutes of Health and grants from The Food and Drug Administration Orphan Products Development Program. He founded and directs the National Pediatric Myoclonus Center, an international center for children with opsoclonus-myoclonus syndrome, a complication of neuroblastoma. Dr. Pranzatelli has published 138 articles in the medical literature, presented 82 research abstracts, and given over 100 lectures, nationally and internationally. Best Doctors in America has consistently recognized him since 1993. The Sangamon Medical Society selected him by peer review for inclusion in ‘Medical Miracles’ in 2006.