The Medical Advisory Board was established in 1986 to provide FSMA with invaluable medical expertise. 
 
         
Tom Crawford, M.D.
Dr Crawford has been interested in all aspects of SMA since 1980. He is currently at Johns Hopkins hospital and continues to be involved in research and clinical care of children with SMA. He is also a member of FSMA's Scientific Advisory Board.
                  
Victor Dubowitz, M.D., Ph.D., FRCP, DHC.
Dr. Dubowitz is a pediatric neurologist at Hammersmith University in London. He has written numerous articles about SMA.
                         
Richard S. Finkel, MD.
Dr. Finkel is a pediatric neurologist and director of the Neuromuscular Program at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He has worked with SMA patients for 25 years and is now engaged in several SMA clinical trials, including one on type 1 patients funded by Families of SMA/Project Cure.
 
John Grayhack, M.D.
Dr. Grayhack currently serves as an Attending Physician and Surgeon at Children's Memorial Hospital and Assistant Professor at Northwestern Medical School.
 
Susan T. Iannaccone, M.D., FAAN.
Dr. Iannaccone has just been appointed the Jimmy Elizabeth Westcott Distinguished Chair in Pediatric Neurology. She is Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Director of Child Neurology at Children's Medical Center Dallas. Dr. Iannaccone has been Principal Investigator for AmSMART, American spinal muscular atrophy randomized trials, since 2000. AmSMART has grown from 5 clinical centers to 15 and is now completing its second clinic trial for SMA patients. This group has worked with the International Cooperative Committee toward a consensus on outcome measures for pediatric SMA and expects, in cooperation with Jim Varni, to have a valid Quality of Life tool available for general use in the next 2 years.
 
John T. Kissel, M.D.
Dr. Kissel is currently Professor of Neurology and Director of the Division of Neuromuscular Disease at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He was educated at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, where he did both his undergraduate and medical school training. He graduated from medical school in 1978, and did a year of internal medicine residency at Ohio State University. He did his residency at Washington University in St. Louis, followed by one year of clinical neuromuscular fellowship and two years of research fellowship at The Ohio State University. He has been on the staff at The Ohio State University since 1985 in the Division of Neuromuscular Diseases, and was Interim Chair of the Department from 2004 to 2006. He is co-director of both the Muscular Dystrophy Clinic and the ALS Clinic at Ohio State. Dr. Kissel has published extensively in a wide range of peripheral nerve, muscle, and anterior horn cell disorders. His particular interests include facioscapulohumerol muscular dystrophy, and clinical trials in the various muscular dystrophies and inflammatory myopathies. He has also participated in clinical trials for the involving the inflammatory neuropathies, anterior horn cell diseases (including spinal muscular atrophy), and myasthenia gravis. He is the co-author of a popular textbook of peripheral nerve disease, “Diagnosis and Management of Peripheral Nerve Disorders”, and has written chapters for many of the standard neuromuscular textbooks. He is President of the Neuromuscular Section of the American Academy of Neurology, a Fellow in the American Academy of Neurology, and a member of the American Neurological Association.
   
Kristin Krosschell, MA, P.T.
Kristin has been a pediatric physical therapist for more than 20 years. She is a faculty member in the Department of Physical Therapy and Human Movement Sciences at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Her primary focus has been children with neuromuscular and neurological disorders and muscle diseases.
                           
Jo Anne Maczulski, O.T.
Jo Anne has been practicing occupational therapy for 27 years. She received her degree from WSU and her Master's Degree in Motor Learning from Columbia University. She has a great deal of experience dealing with children with sensory integration problems and neuromuscular deficits and diseases.
 
Mary Schroth, M.D.
Dr. Schroth is a Pediatric Pulmonologist and has been on the faculty of the University of Wisconsin since 1993. She has been instrumental in the development of the respiratory care program for children with neuromuscular disorders at UW. She also developed a pediatric multidisciplinary clinic for patients with neuromuscular disease with colleagues from pediatric rehabilitation medicine and pediatric orthopedic surgery.
 
Louise Simard, Ph.D.
Dr. Simard is an Associate Professor (University of Montreal / Sainte-Justine Hospital Research Centre) actively involved in SMA research. Her contributions revolve around molecular diagnostics of SMA, regulation of SNM gene expression and SMN function in neuronal cells, and more recently, analysis of SMN nRNA and protein as biochemical markers of SMA type for clinical trials.
                         
Kathryn Swoboda, M.D.
Dr. Swoboda is an Assistant professor, Neurology and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Pediatrics (Medical Genetics) at the University of Utah School of Medicine. She is a neurologist and geneticist with expertise in the diagnosis and management of children with neuromuscular disorders. Her primary clinical research interest is SMA. Dr. Swoboda also a member of FSMA's Scientific Advisory Board . She joined the MAB in 2003.

Albert Freedman, Ph.D.
Dr. Freedman is a child and family psychologist in independent practice in West Chester, PA.  Dr. Freedman provides consultation and training to professionals in health care and educational settings, and frequently speaks and writes on the topic of caring for children with special needs.  He serves as a member of the Family Advisory Council at the A.I. duPont Hospital for Children in Wilmington, DE, and as a consultant to Bayada Nurses in Moorestown, NJ.  Dr. Freedman's son, Jack, was born in 1995 and is affected by SMA Type I.