Daniel Woo, MD, to return to UC College of Medicine as chair of the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine

The appointment is a homecoming. Woo earned his medical degree from the College of Medicine, completed his fellowship in cerebrovascular disorders at UC and spent more than 25 years on the college's faculty. During that time, he served as vice chair of clinical research for the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine and as associate director of clinical research at the UC Gardner Neuroscience Institute.

Woo will return to Cincinnati from the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, where he has served as chair of the Department of Neurology and has held the Irvin and Rosemary Smith Endowed Chair since December 2024.

“Returning to the University of Cincinnati to lead the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine is the greatest honor of my career,” said Woo. “UC is where I trained, where I built my research program and where I learned that the best results come from great teams.”

“I am grateful to Dean Postel and the search committee for their confidence. I look forward to working alongside our faculty, staff and learners, and our partners across the academic health enterprise, to deliver the best care and the best science for patients across our region — and to help develop the next generation of leaders in neurology.”

Woo is a pioneer in the genetic epidemiology of stroke. His work focuses on intracerebral hemorrhage — bleeding within the brain and one of the deadliest forms of stroke — as well as the broader group of conditions known as cerebral small vessel disease.

Throughout his career, he has served as principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than $76 million in research funding, including 13 R01-level awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He has authored more than 280 peer-reviewed publications.

Woo led the NIH-funded Ethnic/Racial Variations of Intracerebral Hemorrhage (ERICH) study, one of the largest of its kind. ERICH enrolled 3,000 patients with intracerebral hemorrhage and 3,000 matched controls at 19 centers nationwide to study risk factors and outcomes. Enrollment was completed on time and under budget. His team's genome-wide research also identified a genetic risk region on chromosome 1q22 linked to intracerebral hemorrhage, a finding later replicated across other forms of small vessel disease.

Woo is a founding member and former chair of the International Stroke Genetics Consortium and served as a principal investigator for the NIH-funded Stroke Genetics Network. He has helped shape national standards of care as a member of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association writing committee for guidelines on the management of spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage.

“Dr. Woo is an internationally respected physician-scientist whose research has changed how we understand stroke, and whose career has been defined by a commitment to delivering the best care and the best science,” said Gregory C. Postel, MD, dean of the College of Medicine, Christian R. Holmes professor and executive vice president for health affairs at UC and chair of the UC Health Board of Directors. “Few leaders know our institution, our patients and our region as well as he does. Combined with his experience leading a department as chair and his deep commitment to mentorship, Dr. Woo is exceptionally well positioned to guide the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine into its next chapter. We are thrilled to welcome him home.”

Woo has mentored more than 65 trainees, many of whom now lead research programs at UC and at institutions nationwide. At UC, he directed the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)-funded T32 training program in cerebrovascular disease and neurocritical care. Nationally, he helped establish the education committee for the NINDS NeuroNEXT clinical trials network. As vice chair of clinical research, he helped the department rank among the top 10 neurology departments for NIH funding three times.

His contributions have been recognized with the 2023 Daniel Drake Medal, the College of Medicine's highest academic honor; the UC Faculty-to-Faculty Research Mentoring Award; and the American Heart Association's Robert G. Siekert New Investigator Award in Stroke.

Throughout his time in Cincinnati, Woo cared for patients as a member of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Stroke Team, with in-person and telemedicine privileges at hospitals throughout the region, while maintaining a general neurology clinic. He was also one of the first two volunteer physicians at the Price Hill Good Samaritan Free Clinic, which has since served thousands of uninsured patients.

Woo succeeds Reena Shah, MD, professor of clinical neurology, who has served as interim chair of the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine since July 1, 2025. Shah will remain interim chair until Woo's arrival.

“We are deeply grateful to Dr. Reena Shah, who stepped forward to lead the department as interim chair and has done so with steadiness, compassion and an unwavering commitment to our faculty, staff, learners and patients,” Postel said. “Her leadership has sustained the department's clinical, educational and research momentum during an important period of transition, and she has positioned the department well for Dr. Woo's arrival.”

At the University at Buffalo, Woo has led the Department of Neurology through significant change. He recruited faculty nationally from institutions including UCLA and Stanford, expanded the department's neurology residency program and launched a “Future Leaders” seminar series to develop early-career faculty. He also served as associate director of UB's Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

Woo has a track record of building programs where patients and learners need them. At UC, he created the transcranial Doppler ultrasound monitoring service, which remains active more than 20 years later. He helped develop a hypothermia-for-cardiac-arrest program at UC and at community hospitals across the region. He also helped create the department's morbidity and mortality conference and a lecture series for physicians in the years after residency.

As chair at UC, Woo will lead the department's clinical, research and education missions. His priorities include expanding access to neurological care across the region, growing the department's faculty, strengthening clinical trials and research development, and building training pathways that bring more students and residents into neurology and clinical research. He also sees opportunities for artificial intelligence and learning health system approaches to improve patient care and reduce administrative burden.

Under Woo's leadership, the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine is poised to expand its clinical reach across the region, strengthen its national prominence in research and continue training the next generation of neurologists and physician-scientists. Learn more about the UC College of Medicine's Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation Medicine.