Yasmin Khakoo

Yasmin Khakoo (born 1964) is an Indian-American pediatric neuro-oncologist^[1] and editor-in-chief of the medical journal Pediatric Neurology since 2022.^[2] In 2023, she won the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine award of the Child Neurology Society for her mentorship and work with minorities and underserved communities.^[3] She is currently the President Elect of the Child Neurology Society.^[4]

Khakoo was born in New York City, and attended high school in the Bronx.^[5] She did her undergraduate studies at Barnard College, went to Columbia University for medical school, and then to the University of California, San Francisco for residency in pediatrics and child neurology.^[6]

Khakoo completed a fellowship in neurooncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. She remained as a member and became child neurology director there in 2015.

Simultaneously she holds an academic position at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she became a full professor in 2020.^[7]

She is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics and a fellow of the American Academy of Neurology, where she was selected for the "Women Leading in Neurology" program in 2019 and has served on the "Advancing Women in Academics" subcommittee since 2021.^[8] She served many years on the scientific selection and program planning committee for the Child Neurology Society, and was elected to the board as the councillor for the East, 2023-2025.

Scientifically, she focuses on neurocutaneous melanosis^[9][10] and is building a registry of children with this rare disease;^[11] paraneoplastic syndromes;^[12][13] and ependymomas.^[14]

She stepped into the role of editor-in-chief of Pediatric Neurology in 2022. Prior to that, she was on the editorial board of the Journal of Child Neurology, where she edited a special issue on Pediatric Neurooncology in 2016^[15] and recorded a podcast as well.^[16]