HUNTSVILLE — Former Gov. Bob Riley, a longtime HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology board member, was honored as the institute’s first Board Member Emeritus. The institute also named Dr. Amit Arora, director of Huntsville Hospitals’ stroke program, to its board of directors.

Arora and his wife, Dr. Aruna Arora, are the founders of Neurology Consultants of Huntsville. He is also a member of the City of Huntsville’s Health Care Authority Board. Arora is a graduate of Emory University and earned his medical degree from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine.

While completing his neurology residency at UAB Hospital, Arora served as chief neurology resident and completed an additional year as an epilepsy fellow.

Arora helped establish the North Alabama Neuro-Stroke Network which uses telemedicine technology to coordinate neurological emergency care at over 10 hospitals in the Huntsville Hospital Health System. He has served as the medical director of the network since its inception.

Riley served as Alabama’s 52nd governor from 2002-2010, after serving three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives for Alabama’s Third District.

He was the first Alabama Republican to win re-election to Congress and as governor in more than a century.

In 2011, he founded Bob Riley and Associates, a Homewood-based consulting firm.