Biography
I believe that the epilepsy care can be best provided with comprehensive team approach from multidisciplinary team of epileptologists, primary care physicians, referring neurologists, neuro-radiologists, neuropsychologists, neuropsychiatrists, neurosurgeons, nurses, EEG technologists, social workers, and most importantly patients and family. In my clinical practice, I always try to include patients and family in their care plan. Also, I strive to provide the good communication with the referring providers so that the transition of care can be smooth. I believe that all of health care providers involving in epilepsy need to actively engage the community awareness and education to the patient, family and general public. I am particularly interested in the most challenging refractory epilepsy cases. Over the past 10 years, I have provided the comprehensive and most advanced epilepsy care with the newest epilepsy surgery and neuromodulation (RNS, DBS, VNS) therapies to patients with refractory epilepsy in North Carolina and New Mexico.
I recently moved from North Carolina to New Mexico because of my passion in underserved patients with epilepsy. After I found out that there is only one epilepsy center (UNM) in the state of New Mexico and there are still many patients without access to the comprehensive epilepsy center. As a medical director and section chief of Epilepsy Program at UNM, I strive to improve the access to our comprehensive and most advanced care to all patients with epilepsy in New Mexico and adjacent are of southwest.
I strongly believe that the best epilepsy care can be delivered in the academic institution which is actively involved in basic and clinical research in epilepsy to find a better diagnostic tools and care for the patients and to continuously educate the next generation specialists in this field for the future patients. My research interests are improvement of epilepsy care and epilepsy surgery outcomes. Because of these interests, I have been actively involved in multiple research projects from investigator initiative to multicenter clinical trials and NIH sponsored translational research. These include multiple new drug trials for the epilepsy patients, device trial with RNS (responsive neurostimulation) system for the FDA post-approval trial, epilepsy monitoring unit practice/safety improvement, epilepsy self-management, modulation of cortical activity and cognitive function with intracranial cortical stimulation, wavelet evaluation of invasive EEG monitoring to identify the epileptogenic zone identification, and various cutting-edge advanced neuro-radiological evaluations such as PET-MRI, CT-MRI merge, high field MRI with 7T as well as 9.4T. Despite hectic and busy clinical responsibilities, I have tried to provide the best education to our medical students, residents, and fellows in epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology. I have trained 7 epilepsy fellows since 2014 and mentored many neurology residents, students, and post-doctoral trainees in epilepsy research. To all of my students, I have tried to provide the collegial but intellectually challenging environment to promote the interest and learning in epilepsy.
Areas of Specialty
Epilepsy Self-Management
Refractory Epilepsy Surgery
Neuromodulation Therapy
ICU EEG monitoring
Education
M.D. from Wake Forest University (2006), Neurology Residency at Wake Forest University (2010), CNP/Epilepsy Fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital (2011).