Allison Brashear, M.D., M.B.A.

Research/Academic Interests

Allison Brashear, M.D., M.B.A., was appointed dean of the UC Davis School of Medicine in April 2019. She oversees one of the nation’s top research, academic and medical training institutions, with more than 700 full-time faculty and more than 400 students.

Brashear is an internationally known researcher in movement disorders and an international expert in ATP1A3-related diseases, a spectrum of rare neurologic disorders. She was the principal investigator to describe a unique genetic form known as Rapid?Onset Dystonia?Parkinsonism, as well as the lead principal investigator in many multicenter trials on cervical dystonia and spasticity, leading to three FDA-approved medications.

She also holds an M.B.A. focused on health-sector management and has expertise in health policy, hospital-clinical integration, academics and research. Brashear has been a lifelong champion of inclusion and patient-centered care, and has worked actively to help advance women in leadership across academic medicine.

Brashear completed the Harvard School of Public Health Leadership program for physicians in 2004, and earned her M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 2012. She was named an Association of American Medical Colleges Council of Deans Fellow in 2014.

Brashear serves on the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and has served on the boards of the American Neurological Association and the American Academy of Neurology, where she was instrumental in crafting a leadership program for women, now expanded to include leadership development for minorities.

Before joining UC Davis, Brashear was professor and chair of the Department of Neurology for 14 years at Wake Forest School of Medicine. She was also an active clinician and held the Walter C. Teagle Endowed Chair of Neurology.