Board of Advisors

Dr. Stephen Silberstein, MD
Advisory Board Member

Stephen D. Silberstein, MD, is Professor of Neurology and Director of the Jefferson Headache Center at Thomas Jefferson University. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American Headache Society. He has served the American Headache Society as President, Treasurer, and Board of Directors member. He has served on the Publications, Scientific, and Education Committees of the American Headache Society and was Co-chairman of the Annual Scientific Meeting. Dr. Silberstein is an active member of the American Academy of Neurology and is Co-director of the national and international Headache Guideline Project, in cooperation with the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. He was the Chairman of the International Headache Society meeting in Philadelphia in 2009. He is Chairman of the headache research group of the World Federation of Neurology.
Dr. Silberstein received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After completing a fellowship in neurology at the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases in London, Dr. Silberstein served as a Pharmacology Research Associate in the Toxicology Laboratory of Clinical Science at the National Institutes of Mental Health, and completed a neurology residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Silberstein is the Senior Editor of the 8th edition of Wolff’s Headache and Other Head Pain, Associate Editor of Cephalalgia and CNS Drugs, and a present or prior member of the Editorial Board of Headache; Cephalalgia; ActaNeurologicaScandinavica; Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry; and Topics in Pain Management. He is an ad hoc reviewer for many publications, including The New England Journal of Medicine; Brain, The Lancet, JAMA, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Annals of Neurology, and Neurology.
Dr. Silberstein has more than 300 publications to his credit. He lectures extensively on the pathogenesis, neurobiology, diagnosis, and treatment of headache.

Dr. Robert P. Cowan, MD, FAAN
Advisory Board Member

Robert Cowan, MD, FAAN is Professor of Neurology and Director of the Headache Program at Stanford University. Prior to coming to Stanford he was the founding medical director of the Keeler Center for the Study of Headache (Ojai, CA) and senior clinical research scientist in molecular neurobiology at Huntington Medical Research Institutes (Pasadena, CA). Dr. Cowan attended University of Southern California, Keck Medical School, completed a residency program at USC Department of Neurology and served on faculty there until 2000. He is Board Certified in the areas of: Psychiatry and Neurology and Pain Medicine. He also holds subspecialty certification in Headache Medicine.  Dr. Cowan is widely published in various scientific journals, including the Journal of the American Medical Association Cephalalgia, and Headache as well as authoring  books, book chapters and scientific presentations. Dr. Cowan lectures both nationally and internationally on a variety of headache topics, and has appeared on NBC, CBS and has been featured in articles ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to Vogue Magazine.

Dr. Cowan holds several nationally elected positions, including chair of the section on Chronic Daily Headache for the American Headache Society. He is immediate past-President of the Headache Cooperative of the Pacific, is a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Headache Society. He is on the boards of the Alliance for Headache Diseases Advocacy, the Headache Cooperative of the Pacific, the American Headache and Migraine Association, and the American Council for Headache Education. He is an editor of Headache Currents, a reviewer for several peer-reviewed journals, including Headache, Cephalalgia, and the Western Journal of Medicine. Dr. Cowan is the author of The Keeler Migraine Method (Penguin/Avery, 2008).

Along with Dr. Alan Rapoport, Professor of Neurology at UCLA School of Medicine, Dr. Cowan co-founded Bon Triage, LLC that develops computer-based tools to aid in the diagnosis, education, and care of people with chronic medical conditions. Before medical school Dr. Cowan founded and subsequently sold Continuing Health Education Systems, one of the first computer-based CME programs.

Dr. Cowan’s primary interest is in improvement of headache care, utilizing novel resources to provide more accurate diagnosis, more effective treatment options while reducing delays in service and decreasing costs. He has been the recipient of NIH, foundation, industry and individual grants and gifts for his research, in excess of 6M dollars. His current research focuses on chronic daily headache, including resting state imaging with fMRI, CSF and whole blood analysis, deep phenotyping, TMS, and electrophysiologic measures.

Dr. Frederick Freitag, DO
Advisory Board Member

Dr. Freitag is currently on the Board of Directors of the National Headache Foundation, position he held since 1993. Dr. Freitag is also the director of the Headache Medicine program and UCNS Headache Medicine Fellowship at Froedtert Hospital and the Medical College of Wisconsin where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Neurology.
He previously held the same positions at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas Texas where he led the development of the comprehensive headache treatment program between 2010 and 2013.
For 27 years he was affiliated with the Diamond Headache Clinic and inpatient treatment program where he was co-director at the time of his leaving. He was responsible for clinical and basic science research there for 24 years. Among the studies, he led a study of genetics of histamine in cluster headache and clinical outcome studies of its use in cluster headache. He was instrumental in the development of the headache medicine fellowship in conjunction with Loyola University of Chicago. He held clinical teaching appointments over the years at Midwestern University, University of Chicago and Rosalind Franklin University.
He received his bachelor of science in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin and his DO degree from the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1979. His residency in Family Medicine was coupled with additional training in headache medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in 1981. He is certified in Family Medicine and holds a Certificate of Added Qualification in Headache Management from the National Board for Certification in Headache Management. He is one of only 290 physicians who have subspecialty certification for Headache Medicine from United Council for Neurologic Subspecialties. He is a Fellow of the American Headache Society. He has been a member of the American Headache Society since his 3rd year of medical school.
He has held numerous posts in professional organization including chairing committees of the American Headache Society, American Osteopathic Association, and the American Society for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics.
He has conducted clinical and basic science research on a variety of topics and has published over a 180 articles in the peer reviewed literature as well as having contributed to over 20 textbooks on headache and its treatment and has been primary investigator on over 200 clinical trials. He has presented his findings at numerous meetings worldwide and lectured on several occasions at the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Milton Grannatt, PhD
Advisory Board Member

Dr. Grannatt retired September 2012 after 25 years in the global pharmaceuticals industry. He was Vice President of Global Business Development and Licensing at Novartis. Prior to Novartis, he held senior positions at Sterling Winthrop and Lex Service, an acquisitive, diversified UK-based company. Additionally, Dr. Grannatt has an extensive deal sheet experience.

Dr. Grannatt currently serves as an outside Director of SymBio Pharmaceuticals Limited, a publicly-traded Japanese pharmaceutical company; a member of the advisory boards of VOX Telehealth and AgoneX Biopharmaceuticals Inc.; and an advisor to selected other biotech companies. In addition, he is a member of the Board of Governors for Certified Licensing Professionals, and is a lecturer in economics at Princeton’s Evergreen Forum. Dr. Grannatt received his undergraduate degree and PhD in economics from Lehigh University.