Stanford Comprehensive Epilepsy Program Team

Brenda Porter, MD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. Porter has 15 years of experience in taking care of children with epilepsy. Taking care of children with epilepsy and trying to provide them with the best opportunity for seizure freedom, social and emotional well-being is the goal of her practice.  She has expertise in medical, surgical and dietary therapy for intractable epilepsy.  She directs the Stanford Tuberous Sclerosis Clinic. Her research has focused on improving outcomes in epilepsy surgery and designing therapies for the prevention of epilepsy in at risk patients.  Dr. Porter sees patients at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital.

Fiona Baumer, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Fiona Baumer is an Assistant Professor in Neurology at Stanford University with a focus on pediatric epilepsy. Dr. Baumer received her B.A. at Stanford University and her M.D. from Harvard Medical School. She remained on the east coast to train in pediatrics and child neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital before returning to Stanford in 2015 for epilepsy training as the first Maggie Otto Fellow in Pediatric Epilepsy.  She joined the neurology faculty in 2016.

Dr. Baumer’s clinical and research interests include difficult to treat pediatric epilepsies and the interaction between epilepsy and cognition. She is gaining expertise in noninvasive brain stimulation as a clinical and research tool in epilepsy. Dr. Baumer is currently participating in the KL2 Mentored Research Fellowship through which she will conduct a study using transcranial magnetic stimulation to assess cortical excitability and synaptic plasticity in benign epilepsy with centrotemporal spikes (Rolandic Epilepsy).

William Gallentine, DO
Clinical Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. William Gallentine is a Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford University.  A product of Waynesburg University, he subsequently received his D.O. from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and then completed a pediatrics residency at Geisinger Medical Center.   Dr. Gallentine next undertook his child neurology residency and clinical neurophysiology fellowship at Duke University, where he remained on the faculty as a pediatric epileptogist for 11 years, prior to being recruited to Stanford in 2018.

Dr. Gallentine’s research interests focus on the role of inflammation and genetics in the development of epilepsy, and the ovelap between the two.   He is part of a NIH funded multi-center study aimed at discovering novel biomarkers of epileptogenesis  and identifying potential therapeutic targets within the inflammatory cascade as a new approach to treating and preventing epilepsy.   He is also interested in the exploration of novel mutation-specific therapeutics for children with genetic epilepsies.

Dr. Gallentine’s clinical interests focus on children with refractory epilepsy.  He offers clinical expertise in all aspects of epilepsy management, including medications, dietary therapy, surgical planning, and neurostimulation.  He has developed specific interests in autoimmune and genetic epilepsies.  His epilepsy and inflammation clinic focuses on children with antibody-mediated autoimmune epilepsy (including NMDA receptor encephalitis), Rasmussen’s encephalitis, recurrent febrile seizures, febrile status epilepticus, genetic epilepsies with seizures triggered by fever (Dravet syndrome , GEFS+), fever-induced refractory epileptic encephalopathy (FIRES), mesial temporal temporal lobe epilepsy, and infantile spasms. His epilepsy and genetics clinic provides multi-disciplinary care focused on the evaluation and management of children with known or suspected genetic epilepsy syndromes with an emphasis on mutation-specific therapy.

At Stanford he serves as the Outpatient Medical Director of Pediatric Epilepsy.  He is an active member of the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society, American Epilepsy Society, and American Academy of Neurology.  Dr. Gallentine has a passion for teaching, too.  During his tenure at Duke, he played a prominent role in medical education serving as the Child Neurology Residency Program Director.   

When not working, Dr. Gallentine is always up for seeking a new travel adventure with his wife Darla and kids, Caleb, Anya, and Gabe.  They definitely consider themselves “foodies,” always looking to try a new dish.  He enjoys watching anything sports related, with San Jose Sharks hockey being his most recent obsession.  

Jin Hahn, MD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. Hahn is a Child Neurologist who studies brain development, epilepsy and conditions such as dysplasia and holoprosencephaly, in which the two overlap. Dr. Hahn received his MD from Harvard in 1982. After residency training in pediatrics and child neurology at Harvard in 1987, he came to Stanford to do a neurophysiology fellowship. After a brief faculty position at UCSD, he returned to Stanford In 1991 to become the Chief of Neurology Service at Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. His research interests are in the areas of neonatal seizures and electoencephalography, neonatal neurology, hypoxic ischemic brain injury and seizure disorders in the first year of life.

Hyunmi Kim, MD, PhD, MPH
Clinical Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Hyunmi Kim is Clinical Professor of Neurology at Stanford University. She received her M.D. and Ph.D. from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea. She completed her residency in Pediatrics at Asan Medical Center and fellowship in Pediatric Neurology at Ewha Womans University Hospital and Seoul National University Hospital in Seoul, Korea. In the United States, she completed her child neurology residency at Medical College of Georgia and epilepsy fellowship at the Cleveland Clinic. She was on the faculty at University of Alabama at Birmingham and then Emory University, before joining at Stanford in 2018.

Dr. Kim’s clinical and research interests are treatment-resistant epilepsy, epilepsy surgery including stereo EEG monitoring and less-invasive treatment, multimodal brain imaging analysis, and population health research of neurological disorders.  She has established a line of research exploring how epidemiological factors relate to childhood epilepsy risk and outcomes.

Dr. Kim’s personal interests are exploring the National Parks, golfing, sailing, and scuba diving.

Juliet K. Knowles, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Juliet Knowles is Assistant Professor in Neurology, and specializes in epilepsy. She received her B.A. with a double major in Microbiology and Philosophy at the University of Texas-Austin.  She then completed her M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurosciences at Stanford University. In graduate school, Dr. Knowles conducted research on novel neurotrophin-based small molecules for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease under the mentorship of chair Dr. Frank Longo. After deciding to become a pediatric neurologist, Dr. Knowles completed her residencies in Pediatrics and Child Neurology at Stanford, where she also served as Chief Resident in Neurology. Following this, she completed a Pediatric Epilepsy fellowship, also at Stanford.

Currently Dr. Knowles cares for patients with pediatric epilepsy, and is particularly interested in genetic epilepsy and difficult to treat, or refractory, epilepsy. Dr. Knowles has developed a basic and translational research program under the mentorship of Drs Michelle Monje, John Huguenard and Courtney Wusthoff, and she is focused on how recurrent seizures influence brain development in pediatric epilepsy, as well as the mechanisms underlying epileptogenesis and associated cognitive dysfunction. Her current projects are particularly focused on interactions between neurons (gray matter) and myelin (white matter). Dr. Knowles’s research is supported by the American Epilepsy Society, a NIH/NINDS K12 award, the CURE Epilepsy Foundation, the Child Neurology Foundation/Pediatric Epilepsy Research Foundation and the Stanford Child Health Research Institute.

When she is not in the clinic or the lab, Dr. Knowles loves to spend time with her husband, Joshua, and their two children. She also enjoys reading, training and running in marathons, and spending time in the great outdoors of California.

Christopher Lee-Messer, MD, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. Lee-Messer’s chief clinical focus is in pediatric epilepsy, especially the relationship between stroke and epilepsy. His translational and basic science interests lie in neuronal development and physiology, and in using that knowledge to create treatments for disease, especially in the injured developing brain. To investigate these subjects, he is currently participating as a fellow in the Deisseroth lab, combining techniques of in vivo and in vitro electrophysiology with optogenetics.

Emily Spelbrink, MD, PhD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. Emily Spelbrink is Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology at Stanford University. Dr. Spelbrink received her B.S. at Emory University in Atlanta, and then her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees through the Medical Scientist Training Program at the University of California San Diego. She completed her pediatrics residency at Harbor UCLA, followed by child neurology residency at Stanford, and pediatric epilepsy fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. Her interests in learning and memory were extended by Ph.D. research in these areas, and continue to fuel her interests in brain development and epileptic encephalopathies as she treats epilepsy patients.

Dr. Spelbrink joined the faculty at Stanford in 2016 as a child neurologist and epileptologist. She sees outpatients primarily at California Pacific Medical Center, in addition to inpatient and EEG service and teaching at Stanford.

When not at work, Dr. Spelbrink enjoys travel, time and space in nature (hiking, running, backpacking, camping), reading, knitting, yoga, and being with close friends and family.

Courtney Wusthoff, MD
Assistant Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences and Pediatrics

Dr. Courtney Wusthoff is the Neurology Director for the Neuro Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. She received her BA in neuroscience and behavior at Columbia University in New York, and her MD at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Wusthoff completed her pediatrics residency at Children's Hospital Oakland, and her neurology and neurophysiology training at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. After her fellowship, Dr. Wusthoff served as Consultant in Perinatal Neurology at the Hammersmith Hospital and Imperial College in London. Her special expertise is in neonatal EEG, neonatal seizures, and complications of newborn brain injury. She also has a major interest in brain monitoring in critically ill infants and children.

Michaela Costello, MD, PhD
Pediatric Epilepsy Fellow

Originally from Baltimore, MD, Michaela Castello comes to Stanford via Child Neurology residency at UC San Diego/Rady Children's Hospital; It was there she developed her fascination with epilepsy. Her research interest in EEG has its origins in the laboratory of Dr. Jessica Mong, where she used it in the characterization of sleep in animal models. She completed her doctoral thesis on lipid regulation and neurodegeneration with Dr. Salvador Soriano. At Stanford she hopes to focus on applying machine learning techniques to seizure localization and epilepsy surgery planning. 

While in San Diego, Dr. Castello tried really hard to get better at surfing with dubious success. Now having moved north, she can be found chipping her extra sparkly nail polish on rock climbing walls, exploring new restaurants, and steadfastly insisting that adults can still build with Lego. Occasionally she writes about her misadventures!

Katherine Xiong, MD
Pediatric Epilepsy Fellow

Dr. Katherine Xiong is a Pediatric Epilepsy Fellow at Stanford. She earned her undergraduate degree in Neuroscience at Brown University, and her medical degree at University of Texas Southwestern. She went on to complete her child neurology residency at Stanford University, where she served as a chief resident. Her academic interests include neonatal epilepsy, epilepsy genetics, and improving care through quality improvement and medical education.  

Lawrence Shuer, MD
Professor of Neurosurgery
Associate Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery

Dr. Shuer performs surgical procedures on patients with uncontrolled seizures. Hetrained in surgery, neurosurgery and neuropathology at Stanford and joined the faculty in 1984.  He has been part of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Team at Stanford since 1992. His interests in neurosurgery include the management of craniofacial anomalies, degenerative spine disorders, syringomyelia, surgical treatment of epilepsy and hypothermic brain protection. He was a consultant for Neuropace as it developed the responsive brain stimulator for medically refractory epilepsy. He is past president of the California Association of Neurological Surgeons, past president of the Western Neurosurgical Society and is chair of the California Medical Association Scientific Advisory Panel on Neurosurgery.

Vivek P. Buch, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery  

Dr. Buch is a neurosurgeon with fellowship training in epilepsy, functional, and minimally invasive neurosurgery. He is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery of Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Buch focuses his expertise on the open and minimally invasive treatment of epilepsy, brain disorders, spinal injury and disease, and other conditions. For each patient, he develops a personalized care plan that is designed to be both comprehensive and compassionate.

Jaimie Henderson, MD
John and Jene Blume - Robert and Ruth Halperin Professor
Director, Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery

Dr. Henderson is the director of the program in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, and has a special interest in movement disorders and epilepsy. Dr. Henderson received his M.D. from Chicago's Rush Medical College in 1988. After completing his residency in Neurosurgery at Saint Louis University and fellowship training in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery, he started the movement disorders surgery program at St. Louis University where he remained on the faculty for 6 years. He joined the Neurosurgery staff of the Cleveland Clinic in 2001, and Stanford's Neurosurgery Department in 2004. Dr. Henderson is an expert in invasive monitoring for surgical evaluation of patients with drug resistant epilepsy.

Candice Osuga Lin, MSN, APRN, BC, ACNP
Nurse Practitioner

Candice earned her undegraduate degree in Biological Sciences from the University of California, Davis. She received her Master of Science in Nursing from Vanderbilt University. She is certified as an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner through the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners, and is a member of the American Association of Neurosciences Nursing, American Association of Nurse Practitioners and Sigma Theta Tau.

She has been active in the care of adult neurosurgery patients. Her interests include neuro-oncology and degenerative spine disease.

Michael Zeineh, MD, PhD
Associate Professor of Neuroradiology

Dr. Michael Zeineh’s background is in Neurosciences and Medicine from California Technological Institute and UCLA with residency training in Diagnostic Radiology and subspeciality in Neuroradiology from Stanford Medical Center. He has extensive experience studying the hippocampus with MRI and is an expert of advanced quantitative neuroimaging in epilepsy and leads the state-of-the art brain imaging of epilepsy patients with 7 Tesla MR scanner.

Gayle K Deutch, PhD
Staff Neuropsychologist and Associate Professor
Clinical and Research Neuropsychologist

Dr. Deutsch has special expertise in evaluation of brain function in people with epilepsy. She received her doctoral degree in clinical psychology at Drexel University and completed a pre-doctoral internship the University of Pennsylvania and a post-doctoral fellowship in clinical neuropsychology at the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the Staff Neuropsychologist at the New Jersey Neuroscience Institute and Assistant Professor of Neuroscience at Seton Hall University, Graduate School of Medical Education. Her research interests are the neural basis of dyslexia and learning disorders and cognitive disorders in epilepsy.

Sepideh Bajestan, MD, PhD
Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Bajestan has received her PhD in Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience. She spent her training during her PhD and post-doctoral course in learning the molecular genetics and biology of neurological and psychiatric disorders. She later trained in Psychiatry at Stanford University and became a board certified General Psychiatrist by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. Dr. Bajestan was the first neuropsychiatry fellow at Stanford University and established this fellowship with Dr. John Barry, her fellowship director and is currently the Associate Neuropsychiatry Fellowship Director. She is also board certified in Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurology by the United Council of Neurological Subspecialties. She has undergone training in different psychotherapy Orientations including Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Cognitive and Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Hypnosis and Prolonged Exposure (PE).

John Barry, MD
Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Barry is the Director of the Neuropsychiatry and Psychotherapy Clinics has a special interest in psychiatric problems of people with epilepsy. He has done studies of depression and psychosis in association with epilepsy, and of the psychiatric mimics of seizures, called psychogenic non-epileptic seizure-like events, also known as psychogenic seizures or pseudoseizures. In patients admitted for video-EEG evaluation, he leads the efforts in making the diagnosis of psychogenic disorders and treating the patients disabled by this condition.

Kim Bullock, MD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Bullock is certified in the subspecialty of Behavioral Neurology & Neuropsychiatry. She runs an outpatient Neuro-Behavior Clinic and Laboratory with special emphasis on non-pharmacological interventions and  evidenced-based psychotherapies for problems such as psychogenic seizures. Her focus is cognitive behavior group therapy and she trains residents, psychology students and therapists in these methods. She currently is investigating the use of group dialectical behavior for non-epileptic seizures.

Juliana Lockman, MD
Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry

Dr. Juliana Lockman is Clinical Assistant Professor in the Neuropsychiatry Division in Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She is also appointed to La Selva Group, where she directs the Functional Neurologic Symptom Disorder (FND) Track within their state-of-the-art residential, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient programs. She completed residencies in both Neurology at the University of Virginia and Psychiatry at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Her clinical activities include providing pharmacologic and behavioral care for clients with psychiatric and behavioral conditions in the context of neurological illness, including epilepsy, stroke, movement disorders and others. She also teaches and supervises Stanford residents and fellows in Neuropsychiatry. Professional goals include advancement of research and clinical care and improving access for clients suffering from neuropsychiatric conditions, including FND and related disorders.

Paul Buckmaster, PhD
Professor of Comparative Medicine and Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Buckmaster is one of the world’s leading scientists working on the anatomy and electrophysiology of temporal lobe epilepsy in animals to discover how brains become epileptic and how spontaneous seizures begin. Dr. Buckmaster's laboratory specializes in the studies of the pathophysiological mechanisms of temporal lobe epilepsy and the neuronal circuitry of temporal lobe structures in normal and epileptic brains.

John Huguenard, PhD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Huguenard is the director of the Stanford Neuroscience Graduate Program training PhD students involved in the study of the brain. He is also one of the world's leading scientists working on the relationship between the pacemaker area of the brain (thalamus) and the cerebral cortex, and how dysfunction of this interaction can lead to seizures. Dr. Huguenard's laboratory specializes in the study of neuronal mechanisms underlying synchronous oscillatory activity in the thalamus, cortex and their interconnection and genes whose products, mainly ion channels, play key roles in the regulation of thalamocortical network responses.

Paul Nuyujukian, MD, PhD
Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and of Neurosurgery

Paul Nuyujukian is a physician-engineer who directs the Brain Interfacing Laboratory . He received his MD and PhD in Bioengineering from Stanford and joined the Departments of Bioengineering and Neurosurgery as faculty in 2017. His group focuses on the development of brain-machine interfaces towards applications for neurological conditions such as stroke and epilepsy, spanning both translational preclinical models and human clinical studies.

Josef Parvizi, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Director of Stanford Program for Intractable Epilepsy

Dr. Parvizi’s clinical training is from Mayo Clinic- Rochester, BIDMC-Harvard University, and UCLA. His major interest is in the study of seizure propagation and treating patients with intractable epilepsy. His special expertise is in detecting the epileptic source in patients with uncontrolled seizures and mapping the brain circuitries that underlie development and spread of seizures. He performs functional brain mapping of the brain during epilepsy surgery evaluations. Dr. Parvizi is also the Director of the Stanford Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program (SHICEP), and is involved in multidisciplinary collaborative research projects with several Stanford principal investigators to understand how different parts of the human brain work and how their function may be broken during seizures.

David A. Prince, MD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences

Dr. Prince is one of the world’s leading scientists working on the cellular mechanisms of epilepsy. Dr. Prince has trained dozens of the next generation leading epilepsy researchers in the world, and he and his research associates have made major advances in the understanding of the physiology of epilepsy. He is the holder of numerous research awards, including an NIH Javitz Award, the American Epilepsy Society award for excellence in research and epilepsy leadership, and he is a past president of the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Prince's laboratory specializes in the studies of neuronal excitability and its regulation in the mammalian brains and mechanisms underlying development and prophylaxis of epilepsy in animal models.

Ivan Soltesz, PhD
Professor of Neurosurgery and Neurosciences

Dr. Soltesz's laboratory employs a combination of closely integrated experimental and theoretical techniques, including closed-loop in vivo optogenetics, paired patch clamp recordings, in vivo electrophysiological recordings from identified interneurons in awake mice, 2-photon imaging, machine learning-aided 3D video analysis of behavior, video-EEG recordings, behavioral approaches, and large-scale computational modeling methods using supercomputers. He is the author of a book on GABAergic microcircuits (Diversity in the Neuronal Machine, Oxford University Press), and editor of a book on Computational Neuroscience in Epilepsy (Academic Press/Elsevier). He co-founded the first Gordon Research Conference on the Mechanisms of neuronal synchronization and epilepsy, and taught for five years in the Ion Channels Course at Cold Springs Harbor. He has over 30 years of research experience, with over 20 years as a faculty involved in the training of graduate students (total of 16, 6 of them MD/PhDs) and postdoctoral fellows (20), many of whom received fellowship awards, K99 grants, joined prestigious residency programs and became independent faculty.