AAN honours longtime leader, Dr. Janis Miyasaki, with the 2025 President's Award

After over two decades of leadership with the AAN, Janis Miyasaki, MD, MEd, FRCPC, FAAN, is being honored with the Academy’s prestigious President’s Award. The award honors outstanding service to the AAN and to the profession of neurology—two things that Miyasaki has given in spades.

“Selecting Dr. Miyasaki for this award was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made as AAN president,” said Carlayne E. Jackson, MD, FAAN, who has worked alongside Miyasaki in Academy leadership for more than a decade. “She is a wise, creative, and devoted leader of this organization, a trusted colleague, and an excellent neurologist—one who has done so much good both directly, through her practice and teaching, and indirectly, through her tireless work on AAN resources."  - Carlayne E. Jackson, MD, FAAN)

Miyasaki has served on nearly every major Academy committee—Brain Health, Meeting Management, Education, Practice, and more—and countless subcommittees and work groups, including those on practice improvement, therapeutics and technology, digital strategy, and wellness. She has also been an invaluable voice in important initiatives on the AAN’s value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, serving on the Special Committee on Racism, the DEI Presidential Task Force, and the Advancing Women in Academics Subcommittee.

Most prominently, Miyasaki is a longtime member of the AAN Board of Directors. She was first elected to the Board as a director in 2011 and went on to serve as Treasurer and then Vice President, becoming a trusted leader both in the AAN and in her field.

“The AAN has helped me grow, make friends and colleagues, and have a career that I could never have dreamed of,” Miyasaki said. “I am so fortunate to have been Vice President and to have had so many opportunities in the AAN, and I’m grateful for the recognition of the President’s Award.”

Miyasaki is Department Head of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Alberta and Alberta Health Services, where she was the Department of Medicine’s first Director of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. She is an active clinical researcher and mentor in movement disorders, physician wellness, and equity. Her other roles have included director of education for neurology for four hospitals; member of the board of trustees for the University Health Network; president of the Medical Staff Association; president of the Canadian Movement Disorders Group; deputy Physician-In-Chief at Toronto Western Hospital, and Associate Clinical Director of the Movement Disorders Centre at Toronto Western Hospital. In 2007, she initiated the first neurologist-led palliative care program for movement disorders in the world. Her accolades for 2025 alone include another AAN honor, the Movement Disorders Research Award, and the King Charles III Coronation Medal.

It was in 2000, however, that Miyasaki first became involved in the AAN’s work. As a specialist in movement disorders, she was invited to write a guideline on Parkinson’s disease. 

“At the time, evidence-based medicine was relatively new,” Miyasaki said. “There was skepticism by the medical profession around it, and there wasn’t a clear methodology around how to develop evidence-based guidelines, which the AAN was trying to do.”

Visit the AAN website for more about Dr. Janis Miyasaki's work and award