Vinodh Narayanan, M.D.

Dr. Narayanan is Medical Director for TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders. He obtained his BS in Physics in 1972 from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He completed graduate studies in mathematical physics at Princeton University, where he received his MA in Physics in 1976. He received his MD from Louisiana State University Medical School, New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1981, and completed his internship and residency in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Hospitals, Baltimore, Maryland. Between 1983 and 1986, he served as resident in Neurology and Child Neurology at Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri (Barnes Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital).

After completing his residency, Dr. Narayanan returned to the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions as a research fellow and faculty member, working in the laboratory of Dr. Gihan Tennekoon, studying the expression and regulation of the peripheral myelin P2 protein gene. He joined the Child Neurology division at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh in 1990, where he remained until 2003 as Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology. In 2003, Dr. Narayanan moved to Phoenix as a member of the Child Neurology division at Barrow Neurological Institute.

Dr. Narayanan is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics and the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (with special competence in Child Neurology). He has served on the Scientific Program Committee and the Executive Board of the Child Neurology Society. Current academic appointments include Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology, University of Arizona College of Medicine, (Phoenix), and Adjunct Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.

Dr. Narayanan has a special interest in the genetic basis of neurological disorders. In 2005, he began a clinical research partnership with TGen by establishing the CHC-BNI-TGen Pediatric Neurogenetics Center (Center for Excellence) at the Children's Health Center, St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. In 2012 he became the Medical Director for TGen's Center for Rare Childhood Disorders. The Center uses next generation sequencing to help diagnose children with neurological disorders of unknown genetic etiology.

In the summer of 2014 he moved his research lab to TGen. His research interests include the neurobiology of genetic disorders (genes to pathogenesis), cell adhesion molecules and synapse formation. Current projects deal with Rett syndrome, Tuberous Sclerosis Complex (TSC), Neurofibromatosis 1 (NF1) and other pediatric neurological disorders. He is the director of the Neurofibromatosis Planning Clinic and the Tuberous Sclerosis Clinic at CRS (Children's Rehabilitative Services).

Click here to learn more about Dr. Narayanan's work with the Center for Rare Childhood Disorders.