Walter Koroshetz

Early life and education

Koroshetz has said that his interest in the brain began in the eighth or ninth grade after reading about action potentialss and ion channels in a book on psychiatry. He was also influenced by seeing his father's six-month hospitalization due to Guillain–Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune neurological disease.

Starting in 1971, Koroshetz attended Georgetown University as an undergraduate. During two of the summers, he worked in the laboratory of Jorge Fischbarg, a physiologist at Columbia University. There, he studied ion transport, an interest he continued to pursue at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine

Career

Early career Koroshetz was a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and vice chair of neurology at . He also directed stroke and neurointensive care, and he led resident training at MGH from 1990 to 2007.

In June 2015, the NIH named Koroshetz permanent director of NINDS. As a result, 40 neuroscience organizations, led by the American Academy of Neurology, sent a joint letter to members of Congress expressing "significant concern" and urging Congress to exercise closer oversight over leadership changes.

Post-NINDS career In 2026, Koroshetz became a senior advisor for the Dana Foundation, a philanthropic organization with a focus on the role of neuroscience in society, as well as the Invisible Wounds Foundation, which focuses on military brain injuries.

In an April 2026 interview, Koroshetz expressed concern about whether "good people" would still take jobs at the NIH after the layoffs there. He said it would be "a tragedy" if the leaders of the institutes, which he said had always been nonpolitical, were replaced by political appointees, and expressed a willingness to return to government work if asked by a future administration.