Joseph J. Volpe, MD is Bronson Crothers Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School and  Neurologist-in-Chief Emeritus, Children’s Hospital, Boston. He is the senior editor of Volpe’s Neurology of the Newborn, 6th Edition.

Dr. Volpe received his MD from Harvard Medical School. He completed an internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and a fellowship as a research associate at the National Institutes of Health. His early career was spent as the Stein Professor of Neurology and Director of the Division of Pediatric Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis before accepting a position at Boston Children’s Hospital in 1990.

Joseph Volpe is recognized as a founding physician in the field of neonatal neurology. In the 1980s, He devised a classification system for hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy and also proposed one of two grading scales for intraventricular hemorrhage. His later research has involved periventricular leukomalacia, another type of newborn brain injury.

In 1997, Volpe was elected to the Institute of Medicine, and in 1998 was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was selected by the American Academy of Pediatrics to deliver the 2012 William A. Silverman Lecture.