Mya Schiess, MD, is an Adriana Blood Distinguished Chair in Neurology for Movement Disorders Research. She is the creator and director of the Movement Disorders and Neurodegenerative Diseases Division. Over the past 20 years, Dr. Schiess has led multiple trials for Parkinson’s disease (PD), including developing a classification criterion for PD subtypes and their correlation to neurotransmitter levels, studying blood biomarkers for diagnosis and progression, using MRI to evaluate brain changes and assessing new medical and surgical interventions. She co-developed the new guidelines for earlier deep-brain stimulation intervention. Currently, Dr. Schiess is the PI in a longitudinal biomarker study looking at REM sleep behavior disorder as a prodromal condition. Dr. Schiess developed the first FDA/IND-approved pilot phase 1 trial evaluating the safety of intravenously delivered allogeneic bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells in patients with idiopathic PD, which has subsequently provided the evidence and supported her current phase II efficacy study.