Daniel Schneider, M.D. Endowed Early Career Professorship in Cognitive Neurology Established
The Rutgers University Board of Governors has approved the creation of the Daniel Schneider, M.D. Endowed Early Career Professorship in Cognitive Neurology. Made possible by a generous gift of $750,000 from Schneider’s estate, which is directed by his mother, Penny Moreno, the gift will go toward retaining and recruiting early career scholars in the field of cognitive neurology. The professorship honors the legacy and life’s work Schneider, who began his career in the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s Department of Neurology.
Schneider served as an assistant and then associate professor in the departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, establishing himself as an outstanding educator, a trusted adviser and a caring clinician. He won numerous teaching awards and served as director of several neurology clinics.
“I wanted to give back in his name and to support the department that supported him so much,” Moreno said. “I don’t want him forgotten. He was too young. He had too much potential.”
Even when he became ill with pancreatic cancer in 2019, Schneider continued teaching, learning and caring for more than a year, meeting with patients via telehealth appointments, a practice he continued until the month before his death in February 2021. At the time of his passing at age 46, he was director of Rutgers’ clinics for deep brain stimulation, behavioral neurology and functional neurologic disorders.
Schneider was fascinated with the human mind from an early age and studied psychology in college. During his medical training at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he became interested in movement disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease. That interest spawned a unique six-year medical residency for Schneider, who spent three years in neurology and three in psychiatry, before completing his fellowship at Columbia University.
“Many movement disorders have overlapping neurological, cognitive and psychiatric manifestations, and broad training endowed him with the skills to have a holistic approach to patients with neurodegenerative diseases,” said Suhayl Dhib-Jalbut, chair of the Department of Neurology at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. “His loss was as impactful to us as to his family.”
Read a story about Schneider that ran on the Rutgers Foundation website in April 2022. Click here to make a gift in support of the Daniel Schneider, M.D. Endowed Early Career Professorship in Cognitive Neurology.
