Standaert serves as a senior UAB leader on the President’s Cabinet and is responsible for leading the university’s research strategy, operations and growth while supporting investigators, research centers and core facilities across the institution.

Standaert is an international expert in movement disorders and Parkinson’s disease. He founded and helped build UAB’s Killion Center for Neurodegeneration and Experimental Therapeutics, which has grown into an internationally recognized research enterprise comprising 18 funded laboratories. The center has supported major federal awards, including a Morris K. Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson Disease Research, a Brain Initiative award and a federally funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. He also helped secure more than $60 million in philanthropic support for neuroscience research at UAB, including a transformational $10 million naming gift that established a permanent endowment for the center.

He is chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the American Parkinson’s Disease Association. He also is a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology and the American Neurological Association.