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Headache and Pain Collection

Editorial board

The Headache and Pain collection represents a publishing venue within SpringerPlus, benefiting from the journal's infrastructure but with its own aims and scope, identity, and editorial board.

As joint Editors-in-Chief for this collection, please allow us to formally introduce ourselves and the collection's editorial board to our readers.

Sait Ashina

Dr Sait Ashina is an Associate Professor at NYU School of Medicine, Department of Neurology at NYU Langone Medical Center. He is a Director of the Headache Center at NYU Lutheran. Dr Ashina earned his medical degree at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests include epidemiology of headache and human pain models.

Qasim Aziz

Professor Aziz started his research career at the University of Manchester and obtained his PhD in 1996. He held posts of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Manchester, and is now Professor of Neurogastroenterology at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry at Queen Mary, University of London since 2006 and is the director of the Wingate Institute of Neurogastroenterology.

Hayrunnisa Bolay

Hayrunnisa Bolay MD, PhD, is Professor of Neurology and Algology, working as a headache specialist/algologist at Gazi University in Ankara, Turkey. She is the director of Neuropsychiatry Centre and Neuroscience PhD program, and a member of the Turkish Academy of Sciences. She has been actively involved in clinical and basic headache research and educational activities including training algologists.

Gianluca Coppola

Gianluca Coppola, MD, PhD, has been a board-certified neurologist since 2005 and holds a doctoral degree from Sapienza University of Rome. He is a clinical neurologist at G.B. Bietti Foundation-IRCCS in Rome, where he obtained the position of Associated Professor of Neurology. He is a member of the International Headache Society, of the Italian Societies for the Study of Headache, of Clinical Neurophysiology, and of Neurology.

Jong-Ling Fuh

Dr Jong-Ling Fuh is an attending physician of Department of Neurology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital and a neurology professor at Yang-Ming University, Taiwan. Dr Fuh’s main clinical and academic interests include migraine, low pressure headache, epidemiological study, and dementia. She has multiple publications on headache and neuropsychology related topics.

Robert Gerwin

Robert Gerwin is Associate Professor of Neurology at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, where he has a neurology pain clinic. He has a full-time neurology and pain management practice in Bethesda MD. A graduate of the University of Chicago School of Medicine, he did post-graduate work at New York University and at the National Institutes of Health. He did his residency in neurology under Maurice Victor. He is past president of the International Myopain Society. He has authored numerous papers, reviews and editorials in the field of myofascial pain. He is on the editorial board of a number of publications. He has lectured and taught throughout the United States and internationally.

Thomas Graven-Nielsen

Thomas Graven-Nielsen is Director at Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), SMI, Department of Health Science and Technology, Aalborg University, Denmark, and full professor of Pain Neuroscience since 2008. His research focuses on translational studies of musculoskeletal pain bridging the gap between basic animal findings and clinical manifestations of pain. The scope is to identify and modulate key features of human pain neuroplasticity.

Jakob Møller Hansen

Jakob Møller Hansen received his medical training at the University of Copenhagen, with exchange studies in Barcelona and Berlin. He the then joined the Danish Headache Center at Rigshospitalet, Glostrup in Copenhagen, where he completed his PhD in 2009.


Dr Hansen’s main research focus has been on migraine mechanisms, with emphasis on migraine with aura. Dr Hansen did two years of post-doc training at the Headache Research and Treatment Program at the University of California in Los Angeles, USA with Professor Andrew Charles. Dr Hansen is now in his neurology residency in Denmark and is continuing his research at the Danish Headache Center. 

Stella Iacovides

Stella Iacovides is a lecturer in the School of Physiology, University of the Witwatersrand’s Medical School, South Africa. Stella completed her PhD degree in 2014 and her research focused on various interactions between pain and sleep in women. In addition to teaching physiology to undergraduate and postgraduate students, Stella is currently supervising several postgraduate students, who are conducting research in pain, sleep and nutrition in women.

Mattias Linde

Mattias Linde has worked as headache specialist in Sweden for many years. He is professor of neuroscience at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and consultant neurologist at the Norwegian Advisory Unit for Headaches. He has authored several books and more than one hundred scientific articles on headache. He runs several research projects within the Global Campaign against Headache.

Luana Lionetto

Dr Luana Lionetto is senior chemist at the Molecular Diagnostics Unit of Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata (IDI-IRCCS) with a specific focus on development of analytical methods by HPLC–MS/MS. Analysis are aimed to study Therapeutic Drug Monitoring, pharmacokinetics and biomarkers identification of diseases. Dr Lionetto is a PhD in Biochemistry, specialised in Clinical Pathology at Sapienza University of Rome.

Anna Malykhina

Anna Malykhina, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of Colorado Denver, USA. She directs a neurourology laboratory focused on neurophysiology and pathophysiology of the lower urinary and gastrointestinal tracts. Her research is centered around functional chronic pelvic pain disorders with particular emphasis on the mechanisms underlying the processing of sensory nociceptive information.

Till Sprenger

Dr Sprenger trained in neurology in Munich/Germany. He later worked as post-doc and faculty at UCSF. He was then appointed as research professor at the University Hospital Basel. He is now head of the Department of Neurology at the DKD Helios Klinik Wiesbaden/Germany. His research interests include clinical trials and structural/functional neuroimaging in headache disorders, neuropathic pain and multiple sclerosis.

Claudio Tana

Claudio Tana, MD, is specialist in internal medicine and works at AUSL Reggio Emilia, Guastalla Hospital, Reggio Emilia, Italy. Since 2014 he has been national coordinator of the Young Ultrasound Area for the Italian Federation of Hospital Internists (FADOI). He has over 90 publications as full length papers in international journals, congress abstracts and book chapters. He is reviewer, member of the editorial board, guest and associate editor for several international journals. His interest areas include rare disorders, chronic pain, headache and their relation with cardiovascular disease.

Ursula Wesselmann

Ursula Wesselmann is a clinician-scientist and an international expert in chronic pain syndromes in women. She obtained MD/PhD degrees from the Christian-Albrechts-University in Kiel, Germany, followed by postdoctoral studies at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, IL, residency-training in neurology at the University of Chicago, and pain-fellowship-training at the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. From 1995-2008 she joined the faculty of the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD. Since 2008 she is Professor of Anesthesiology, Neurology and Psychology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Division of Pain Medicine.