Dr. Merit Cudkowicz is the Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Neurology Service, Director, Sean M. Healey & AMG Center for ALS at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Dr. Cudkowicz is co-founder and former director of the NCRI.  She directs the Massachusetts General Hospital ALS Program and the Massachusetts General Hospital Neurological Clinical Research Institute.  She is Principal Investigator of the Clinical Coordination Center for the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Neurology Network of Excellence in Clinical Trials (NeuroNEXT). She is one of the founders and former co-directors of the Northeast ALS Consortium (NEALS), a group of over 100 clinical sites in the United States, Canada, Europe and the Middle East dedicated to performing collaborative academic led clinical trials and research studies in ALS.   Her passion for caring for people with ALS has enabled her to bring innovations to accelerate the development of treatments for people with ALS.  Dr. Cudkowicz is launching the first platform trial initiative in ALS, the HEALEY ALS Platform Trial, a program that will greatly accelerate therapy development in ALS.