Julian E. Bailes, M.D. is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at West Virginia University School of Medicine. He has a long standing interest in neurological sports medicine, and has been a sideline physician at either the NFL or NCAA Division I levels for the last twenty years. He is the Chairman of Sports Medicine representing organized neurosurgery in the Congress of Neurological Surgeons and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.' Since 1994, he has been the neurological consultant to the NFL Players’ Association concerning the health of NFL retirees. In 2000, he established and became the Medical Director of the Center for Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, along with Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz, Center Director.

Dr. Bailes’ interests include cerebrovascular disease and surgery, stroke, and traumatic brain injury. He has extensive clinical and research experience in sports concussion and spinal injury. His research laboratory has conducted hundreds of experiments concerning brain injury, ischemia, and hypothermia. He is the Director of the Brain Injury Division of the Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. Dr. Bailes has authored over 100 articles in peer-reviewed medical journals concerning various aspects of his research, in addition to numerous books including Sports Related Concussion, Neurological Sports Medicine, and When Winning Costs Too Much: Steroids, Supplements, and Scandal in Sports. Since 2001, he has been selected as “America’s Best Doctors” and since 2005 “America’s Top Surgeons”.

He is a graduate of Louisiana State University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He completed an internship in general surgery at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and residency in neurological surgery at Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago, while subsequently having a cerebrovascular surgery fellowship at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.