Dr. Gottschalk received his MD from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and completed residency at the Neurological Institute of NY. He was then a research fellow at the Substance Abuse Research Center of the New York State Psychiatric Institute studying the neurobiology of cocaine abuse using functional brain imaging. He began his career in Headache Medicine as a fellow of the Montefiore Headache Unit, training under Drs. Richard Lipton, Seymour Solomon, and Lawrence Newman. After full-time clinical practice as a General Neurologist from 2001-2009, he returned to Yale as full-time clinical faculty in Neurology. He was UCNS board-certified in Headache Medicine in 2012 and was made Fellow, AHS, in 2014.
Dr. Gottschalk is currently director of the Yale Headache & Facial Pain program and Chief of the section of General Neurology. This program provides training to medical students and residents in Neurology as well as Primary Care. As Director of the Headache Medicine fellowship program he supervises trainees who have chosen a career in this field. He is active in curriculum development at the American Headache Society (AHS), working to establish milestones for Headache Medicine knowledge and practice over the full range of medical education programs. He is a member of the AHS Ethics Committee and of the UCNS Certification Exam Liaison Committee.
In 2020, Dr. Gottschalk was elected President of the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy (AHDA), an organization that lobbies Congress to address barriers to appropriate care and funding for research of headache disorders. Given that migraine is the #1 cause of disability in women age 19-49 and the second leading cause of disability of all disorders worldwide, the lack of funding for training in this field and research into new remedies should be considered a public health emergency.
Dr. Gottschalk’s primary research interest is in education—from neurology trainees and Primary Care physicians to the general public—regarding the facts of Headache disorders and the fictions that interfere with their recognition and treatment.