ROCHESTER, Minnesota —Mayo Clinic’s new chief executive will come from its development office and assume leadership in November.

Dr. John Noseworthy, a neurologist and the medical director of Mayo’s Department of Development, will succeed Dr. Denis Cortese, who revealed in February he would retire this year. Cortese will work with Noseworthy over the next several months before leaving.

Mayo is a health-care titan, but it too is grappling with the economic problems in health care. The Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal noted that its investment portfolio fell $745 million last year and as a result its pension fund was underfunded by $2.1 billion by the end of the year (though the clinic broke even for 2008).

Noseworthy is also a professor of neurology in Mayo’s College of Medicine, specializes in multiple sclerosis and vice chair of the Mayo Clinic Rochester Executive Board. He was educated in Canada and had a research fellowship at Harvard Medical School. In 1990, he joined Mayo and lead the Department of Neurology from 1997 to 2006. He is also editor-in-chief of Neurology.

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