Dr. Mark J. Alberts is a Professor of Neurology and the Director of the Stroke Program at Northwestern University Medical School and Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. After earning his MD with Alpha Omega Alpha honors from Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Alberts completed a neurology residency followed by a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored fellowship in cerebrovascular disease at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. While on the faculty at Duke, he was the Director of the Stroke Unit, the Transcranial Doppler Laboratory, and the Acute Stroke Team. He is board certified in neurology and vascular neurology.

Dr. Alberts has received numerous awards including the Affiliate of the Year Award from the American Heart Association (AHA) and the National Brain Resuscitation Award. Many organizations including the AHA and NINDS have provided Dr. Alberts with grant support, and he has been funded by NIH to study the genetics of cerebral aneurysms. Dr. Alberts is or has been a member of various committees and boards including the Brain Attack Coalition, the AHA Board of Directors, and the Illinois Stroke Task Force. He has been the chairperson for the AHA Brain/Stroke Study Group and serves on two NIH Study Sections. Dr. Alberts assisted in establishing the Stroke Belt Consortium, a highly successful regional organization to improve stroke education.

His current research interests include studying aspirin resistance, identifying new treatments for acute stroke, and studying new medications and interventions to prevent strokes. An author of more than 150 articles and book chapters, Dr. Alberts was the genetics section editor of Stroke, the editor of the book Genetics of Cerebrovascular Disease, and formerly the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neurovascular Disease. Dr. Alberts has been an invited speaker at numerous national and international meetings and is on the Global Publications Committee for the REACH Registry. He has been very involved in defining and forming various types of Stroke Centers in the U.S. and throughout the world in an attempt to improve the care of patients who suffer a stroke.