Dr. Michael Levy, MD, PhD, is the Research Director of the Division of Neuroimmunology & Neuroinfectious Disease. He completed the MD/PhD program at Baylor College of Medicine (Houston, TX) with a focus on neuroscience. Dr. Levy completed his Johns Hopkins internship in the Osler Medicine program, residency in the Johns Hopkins Neurology program and a fellowship in Neuroimmunology at Johns Hopkins University. In 2009, Dr. Levy was appointed to the faculty as Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins where he started the Neuromyelitis Optica Clinic and Research Laboratory and in 2019 he moved to the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School to develop the research program in neuroimmunology. 

Clinically, Dr. Levy specializes in taking care of patients with rare neuroimmunological diseases including neuromyelitis optica, transverse myelitis, MOG antibody disease, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis and optic neuritis. In addition to neuroimmunology clinics, Dr. Levy has a special interest in patients with superficial siderosis of the central nervous system. Dr. Levy is the principal investigator on several clinical studies and drug trials for all of these conditions.

Appointed the Research Director of the Division of Neuroimmunology & Neuroinfectious Disease at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Levy is focused on understanding how the immune system and the nervous system interact to cause disease. This includes autoimmune diseases, such as neuromyelitis optica, in which the immune system is aberrantly responding to a harmless trigger, as well as Parkinsons and Alzheimer's disease in which the immune system might be reacting to a trigger in the neural environment. In his lab, they use genetically modified mice to model these neuroimmunological interactions and then develop strategies to re-educate the immune system towards a better outcome.