Eelco F.M.Wijdicks was born in Leiden, the Netherlands.He earned his MD from the University of Leiden, did his residency and PhD at Erasmus University in Rotterdam and became staff neurologist at University Medical Center Utrecht. He was a visiting scientist and research fellow at Neurologic-Neurosurgical Intensive Care Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.In 1992,he joined the Department of Neurology at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and started the Neurointensive Care program.He is a fellow of the American College of Physicians,fellow of the American Neurologic Association and fellow of the Neurocritical Care Society. He is Professor of Neurology and Chair of the Division of Critical Care Neurology and currently practicing in the Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit at Saint Marys Hospital (Mayo Clinic Rochester).He is the founding editor of the journal Neurocritical care, the official journal of the Neurocritical Care Society.He has over 750 research papers,book chapters,topic reviews and editorials to his credit.He developed and validated the FOUR score.He is the senior author of the American Academy of Neurology guidelines on prediction of outcome in comatose survivors after cardiopulmonary resuscitation (2006) and both guidelines on the diagnosis of brain death (1995 and 2010). He single-authored multiple textbooks pertaining to the care of critically ill neurologic patients, care of patients with a neurologic complication in medical and surgical intensive care units. His books received the Commendable Book Award of the British Medical Association (2004) and the Honorable Mention book Award of the American Medical Writers Association (2008).