Nishant K. Mishra, MD

Nishant Kumar Mishra, MBBS, PhD, MD, is a neurologist who specializes in vascular neurology and stroke. “My goal is to make a positive impact in the lives of stroke patients, not only by offering the best care, but also by advancing the field through clinical research and novel discoveries,” he says.

Dr. Mishra says he became a doctor because he wanted to be of service to people. “We deal with stroke on a daily basis, but our patients are dealing with it for the first time,” he says. Often stroke patients are figuring out how to manage cognitive issues, changes in mood, or questions about why this happened to them. “So, I try to offer them a good deal of time to get a sense of exactly what is going on with them, and then put myself in their shoes,” Dr. Mishra says. “If I wasn’t the doctor, how would I expect to be treated?”

Before he came to Yale in 2021, Dr. Mishra worked at several major stroke centers and neurology institutes around the world, and was a clinical scientist at the Food and Drug Administration. He made significant contributions to the field through his doctoral work, informing whether the exclusion criteria proposed by drug authorities for the treatment of ischemic stroke patients were meaningful and should be followed.

He also pursues clinical research that spans the breadth of stroke care, including acute intervention, prevention, and post-stroke recovery. “I’ve spent a large part of my life not only improving the outcomes of patients by optimizing their medical care, but also though research in collaborative efforts with my colleagues, and that has contributed to significant changes to the way we treat patients, which has really encouraged me to keep going,” he says.