Joost Smolders is a consultant neurologist and associate professor at the departments of Neurology and Immunology of Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam (NL). He heads MS center ErasMS and works as researcher at the Neuroimmunology research group of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience Amsterdam (NL). His research has a focus on understanding normal immune surveillance of the human brain by T cells, and the contribution of pathogenic B and T cells to neuroinflammatory disorders, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), neuromyelitis optica spectrum-disease, and MOG-associated disease. He studies cohorts of patients with these diseases using translational approaches, including genetics, immunology, and post-mortem pathology research. His main scientific contributions are the investigation vitamin D supplements in an MS clinical trial, the identification and characterization of tissue-resident memory T cells in the post-mortem human brain, and the validation of an MS-progression single nucleotide polymorphism in post-mortem brain tissue. Furthermore, his research-lines aim on a more targeted and cost-effective application of diseases-modifying therapies in MS. Besides his research, he works as a clinician at the MS center ErasMS and the department of Neurology of Erasmus MC, and he serves in the board of the MS working group of the Dutch Society for Neurology.