Claudia Sommer, MD

Chair of the Benson Fellowship Committee

Professor of Neurology at the University of Würzburg, Germany

Claudia Sommer is a Professor of Neurology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She received training in neurology, psychiatry, neuropathology, and experimental pain research. At the University Hospital of Würzburg, she serves as a consultant in neurology, organizes outpatient clinics for patients with neuromuscular disorders, pain and headache, and she leads the Peripheral Nerve Laboratory with a service for nerve-, muscle- and skin biopsies. Research interests are the role of inflammation in neuropathy and pain, and how autoantibodies are related to diseases. A major focus of the lab are the antibody-mediated diseases, in particular the autoimmune neuropathies and disorders of the stiff-person spectrum disorder. Prof. Sommer has written more than 300 original research papers and more than 100 reviews and book-chapters and edited several books. She has served as President of the German Pain Society in 2019 to 2020 and as President of the International Society for the Study of Pain (IASP) from 2020 to 2022). She is a Fellow of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN), and has been involved in their educational activities for many years. She is presently a Board member of the Peripheral Nerve Society (PNS) and has received the PNS 2023 Gebhart Prize for her work on inflammatory neuropathies. She is active in the German competence network for peripheral neuropathies (KKPNS), and is Deputy Editor of the European Journal of Neurology.

University of Würzburg, Germany