Dr. Celesia received his medical degree magna cum laude from the University of Genoa Medical School in Italy and his master of science degree from McGill University Faculty of Medicine in Montreal, Canada. He completed a Neurology residency at the Montreal Neurological Institute and a post-doctoral fellowship in Neurophysiology at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Dr. Celesia is board certified in Neurology. He is a member of several medical societies including the American Academy of Neurology, the American Neurological Association, and the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society. He was President of the American Academy of Clinical Neurophysiology in 1993 to 1995. He was Editor-in-Chief of Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, an international medical journal from 1987 to 1999.
Dr. Celesia has published more than 190 articles on neurological disorders and has been an invited speaker at various meetings both nationally and internationally. He has been a Professor of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin Madison from 1974 to 1982. At Loyola University of Chicago, Dr. Celesia was Professor and Chairman of the Department of Neurology and Director of the Laboratories of Clinical Neurophysiology from 1983 to 1999. In 2006 he was the recipient of the Herbert Jasper Award by the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society.
He is internationally known for his research in auditory and visual disorders. In 1969 in collaboration with F. Puletti he mapped the auditory cortex of humans undergoing surgery for the treatment of intractable epilepsy.
In 2005 he edited a book on “Disorders of Visual Processing” and in 2013 a book on Disorders of Peripheral and Central Auditory Processing both published by Elsevier, Amsterdam.
Dr. Celesia has helped train many neurologists and clinical neurophysiologists. Four of his former fellows are now chairing department of neurology or neurophysiology.
As a member of American Neurological Association he has chaired the Ethic Committee in 1994. Together with Dr. F. Plum he represented the ANA in the Multi-Society task Force on Persistent Vegetative State.
As a liaison from the IFCN (International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology) to the Latino American Chapter of IFCN he has fostered clinical neurophysiology education in South America.
In July, 2004 he retired as a professor of Neurology at Loyola and is now an adviser to the department of clinical neurophysiology at Kyushu University in Fukuoka Japan, an ex-officio member of the board of The Chicago Council for Science and Technology. He is member of the research committee of the Instituto Chiossone for the Blind in Genova Italy and of the European Task Force on the Vegetative State.
He volunteers at the Field Museum of Chicago Department of Zoology were he has contributed to the research of lions in Africa and recently published the effects of changing global climate on the distribution of the African lion.
