In Memoriam: Susan Perlman, MD, Longtime UCLA Neurology Leader in Ataxia and Huntington’s Disease Care

The UCLA Department of Neurology is deeply saddened to share that Susan Perlman, MD, passed away on September 30, 2026. 

Dr. Perlman was part of UCLA Neurology for more than four decades. In that time, she built programs that became central to both UCLA and the national communities caring for people with ataxia and Huntington’s disease. She led the UCLA Ataxia Center, the UCLA Huntington's Disease Society of America Center of Excellence, and the UCLA Neurogenetics Clinical Trials program. The Ataxia Center she helped build now cares for more than 2,500 patients and families and sees 150 to 200 new patients each year.

Dr. Perlman brought a distinctive approach to medicine, along with enormous persistence and an extraordinary commitment to her patients. Many of those relationships lasted decades. She wrote several years ago that she was caring for the third generation of some families she had first met early in her career. Her own description of how she approached patients with progressive and often untreatable neurologic disease was simple: "there is always something that can be done."

She brought that same persistence to research. Dr. Perlman built a substantial clinical trials program in ataxia, multiple system atrophy, Friedreich ataxia, and Huntington disease. Her work helped move these fields from an era with few diagnostic tools and essentially no disease-modifying therapies into the current era of international natural-history studies, drug trials, and now gene-therapy trials.

Dr. Perlman meant a great deal to UCLA, and particularly to the patients, families, faculty, and staff who worked closely with her. She was a beloved member of the department in all of its functions. 

Our deepest condolences and thoughts are with Dr. Perlman's family and all who loved her.