Florian Eichler MD

Dr. Florian Eichler received his M.D. from the University of Vienna Medical School. After graduating from medical school in 1997, he entered residency in Pediatrics and pursued studies on cerebral blood flow and metabolism at the University of Vienna. In 1999 he won a scholarship to study in vivo MR spectroscopy in pediatric patients with metabolic and neurometabolic conditions at Johns Hopkins (Stipendium Metabolicum 1999) and joined the laboratory of Dr. Hugo Moser dedicated to peroxisomal disorders at the Kennedy Krieger Institute. Following his research fellowship at Johns Hopkins he underwent residency training in Child Neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). After completing residency in 2005 he joined the staff at MGH.

Now an Associate Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School he is extending his research into animal models of neurodegenerative disorders. His research focus is on the genetics of peroxisomal disorders, lipid metabolism, and spatial aspects of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. As director of the leukodystrophy clinic at the Massachusetts General Hospital, he sees patients with a variety of white matter disorders. He currently holds several NIH awards funding studies to analyze metabolic changes seen in the brain by MR measures and to determine the neurotoxicity of newly discovered atypical sphingolipids.