A world-leading expert in traumatic brain injury, Diaz-Arrastia is the Presidential Professor of Neurology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
His most recent work explores using MRI, functional MRI and PET scanning to characterize the multiple complex mechanisms involved in traumatic injury to the brain, as well as combining imaging, genomic and tissue biomarkers to better predict patient outcomes after traumatic brain injuries and to develop novel therapies.
Diaz-Arrastia earned an M.D. in 1988 and Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1986 from Baylor College of Medicine and a B.A. magna cum laude in biochemistry in 1979 from Rice University. From 1989 to 1992, he was a resident in neurology at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, following a one-year internship in internal medicine at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School.