Michael Brainin

Michael Brainin is Full Professor in Clinical Neurology at the Danube University in Krems, Austria, where he chairs the Center of Clinical Neurosciences. He is head of the Department of Neurology at the Landesklinikum Donauregion Tulln, a teaching hospital for Vienna Medical School. Since 2005, he has also been acting as director of the Department of Clinical Medicine and Preventive Medicine at the Danube University. His main scientific interests are cerebrovascular disorders including early treatment and rehabilitation.

He is a co-founder and past-president of the Austrian Stroke Society. He is Chairman of the Scientific Committee of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) (since 2009).
He is President Elect of the European Stroke Organisation (ESO) and a member of the Executive Board of the World Stroke Organisation (Treasurer, since 2008).
He chairs the WSO Education Committee and co-chairs the World Stroke Academy which is the global teaching website of the WSO.

He is responsible for a number of postgraduate programmes, among them an MSc Programme for Neurorehabilitation and the ESO-European Master's Programme for Stroke Medicine.

He is actively conducting several clinical trials, including on stroke recovery, and has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and edited 4 books. He is Associate Editor of the "European Journal of Neurology", Field Editor (brain recovery and rehabilitation) for "Stroke", and Field Editor (education) for the International Journal of Stroke. He acts on the Editorial Boards of "Cerebrovascular Diseases" and "Neuroepidemiology". He was elected Fellow of the European Stroke Organisation, International Fellow of the American Heart Association and received an honorary doctor's degree from Hanoi University, Vietnam. He is an honorary member of several scientific societies, among them the Hungarian Stroke Society and the French Neurological Society.

e-mail: michael.brainin@donau-uni.ac.at

Michaela Trapl, SLT, MSc

Stroke Unit, Department of Neurology, Landesklinikum Donauregion Tulln and Department of Clinical Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Danube University, Karl Dorrekstrasse 30, 3500 Krems, Austria.

Michaela Trapl is a speech and language therapist at the Stroke Unit, Department of Neurology, Landesklinikum Donauregion Tulln, Austria. She is also a member of the research team at the Department of Clinical Medicine and Preventive Medicine at the Danube University, Krems.

Michaela Trapl's main research interests are the management of acute dysphagia after stroke, with the focus on early assessment, treatment and prevention of pneumonia. She and her team developed a dysphagia screening tool named "The Gugging Swallowing Screen (GUSS)", which was published in 2007 in Stroke. Compared to other published studies, GUSS varies with regard to the test sequence concerning consistencies.

Michaela Trapl has been conducting workshops, seminars and lectures at universities and hospitals in this area.