Dr. Vitek is the Head of the Neurology Department and Director of the Neuromodulation Research Program at the University of Minnesota. He previously served as the Neuromodulation Research Center Director at the Lerner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation developing functional surgery and deep brain stimulation (DBS) techniques for the treatment of neurological disease. Dr. Vitek has also held faculty positions at Emory University and The Johns Hopkins University where he assisted in the development of the functional neurosurgery programs and conducted research on the pathophysiology of movement disorders and mechanism(s) underlying the beneficial effects of DBS.

Currently, Dr. Vitek serves as the PI on several NIH-, foundation- and industry-funded grants, which include both non-human primate and human clinical studies on the neurophysiology of movement disorders and neuromodulation mechanisms. He is also the PI for an industry-sponsored multicenter phase III pivotal clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of a new neuromodulation device that recently received FDA approval. Many of his research projects involve close collaboration with other neurologists, neuroscientists, neurosurgeons, neuroimaging faculty and/or biomedical engineers. Much of this work has provided new insight into the neurophysiology of movement disorders and the therapeutic mechanisms of DBS and contributed to the application of DBS to other neurological disorders.