Dr. Anthony Amato is the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Distinguished Chair in Neurology,  Chief of the Neuromuscular Division and Director of Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory at BWH. He is a Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Amato received a scholarship through the United States Air Force (USAF) for medical school.  He served 14 years as an officer in the USAF and received numerous decorations, including the Meritorious Service Medal. After service in the USAF, Dr. Amato was staff at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio for 3 years before he was recruited to Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Amato started and directed the ACGME-approved Clinical Neurophysiology Fellowship at Harvard Partners (BWH/MGH) from 2000 until 2005. In 2005, Neuromuscular Medicine became a recognized fellowship, so he started and served as the director of the Harvard Partners (BWH/MGH) ACGME-approved Neuromuscular Medicine Fellowship program. This is the largest such training program in the country. He has mentored over 100 fellows, many of whom now directed neuromuscular programs across North America. He has received numerous accolades for his teaching.

He has taught and directed numerous CME courses through Harvard Medical School as well as courses at the American Academy of Neurology (AAN), American Neurological Association (ANA), American Association of Neuromuscular and Electrodiagnostic Medicine (AANEM), and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). He has served on the Education Subcommittees for the AAN and AANEM was the Program Chair in charge of planning the AANEM annual meeting in 2016. He chairs the research committee of the American Neuromuscular Foundation/AANEM. He served on the planning committees for the International Congress of Neuromuscular Disease in Vienna in July 2018, the 3^rd Global Conference on Myositis in Berlin in 2019 and 4^th conference in Prague that to be held in 2021 (cancelled because of COVID-19 pandemic) and the conference to be held in Brussels in 2022.

Dr. Amato was elected by his peers to be the Vice-chair and then the Chair of the Neuromuscular Section of the AAN 2009 to 2013.  As Chair of the Section, he reviewed and approved several practice guidelines and metrics for several neuromuscular disorders (e.g., Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, peripheral neuropathy, ALS). In addition, he led the AAN’s first medical mission trip to Ecuador in 2012. He was also elected by my colleagues to represent them on the Board of the United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties (UCNS) from 2011 to 2013. During this period, he guided through the board-certification examination and recognition of Clinical Neuromuscular Pathology as a subspecialty. He led the AAN practice guideline committee on limb-girdle and distal muscular dystrophies that was published in Neurology. Dr. Amato has also served on the Medical Advisory Board for The Myositis Association (TMA), reviews grants for the TMA and has been invited several times to speak at the annual TMA Patient Conference.

Dr. Amato was a founding member and have served on the Executive Committee of the Muscle Study Group (MSG), which has now grown to over 150 scientific investigators around the world. He has been a primary investigator in many clinical research trials involving patients with a variety of neuromuscular disorders sponsored by the NIH, FDA, and industry.  He is a Co-PI on Partners Neurology (BWH/MGH) NIH NeuroNext grant- one of 25 sites selected across the USA to be selected to participate in phase 2 neurology clinical trials sponsored by the NeuroNext program (NIH/NINDS). He is responsible for overseeing all the clinical NIH NeuroNext trials conducted at BWH and serve on the NeuroNext Executive Committee. In addition, He is a co-PI on the most recently awarded NIH NeuroNext grant (direct cost of approximately $6 million), large multicenter NIH grant through the NeuroNext network (1U01AR070498-01), the aim of which is to assess the efficacy of a therapeutic drug (ManNAc) in a rare form of muscular dystrophy. He has mentored fellows and junior colleagues on how to design clinical trials and serve as investigators in clinical trials.

Dr. Amato is an author or co-author on over 350 published articles, chapters, and books. He co-wrote 5 chapters on Muscle Disorders, Inflammatory Myopathies, Neuromuscular Junction Disorders, and on Peripheral Neuropathies in the most recent editions of Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine and have written one the leading textbooks in the field, Neuromuscular Disorders, in it’s 2^nd edition. He edits several chapters in Up-to-Date including the chapters dealing with how to diagnose and treat the various inflammatory myopathies. He has been the Associate Editor of Neurology in charge of all neuromuscular submissions since June 2013.

During this COVID-19 pandemic, he has volunteered to serve on the in-patient ward and outpatient COVID-19 clinics. He has had numerous research publications during this time increasing the understanding how COVID-19 affects muscle and the nervous system, including an autopsy series of 35 consecutive patients who died from COVID-19. He wrote the first report of Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) associated with COVID-19 vaccination. He was asked by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) to be their neurology consultant reviewing all reports of possible neurological adverse events associated with COVID-19 vaccines. He was also asked by the World Federation of Neurology (WFN) and World Health Organization (WHO) to serve as a neurology consultant to assess long term consequences of COVID-19 (“long haulers”).