ATLANTA―Carrie McDonald, PhD, ABPP-CN, FAES, will present the Fritz E. Dreifuss Lecture during the Presidential Symposium at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES). Dr. McDonald’s presentation is titled “Cognitive and Brain Reserve in Epilepsy: Building Resilience to Mitigate Seizure Impact.”
Dr. McDonald is a professor of radiation oncology and psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist. She is a principal investigator at the UCSD Center for Multimodal Imaging and Genetics, where she directs the Laboratory of Cognitive Imaging. Her research focuses on leveraging multimodal neuroimaging, in combination with patient-specific risk and resilience factors, to predict post-surgical outcomes and risk for disease progression in adults with epilepsy and brain tumors.
Dr. McDonald serves as director of the Neuropsychological Assessment Clinic at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center, overseeing neuropsychological evaluations of patients with CNS disorders. She is principal investigator on four multi-center NIH R01s and a mentor on NIH training grants, ranging from F31 fellowships to K23 career development awards.
She is co-chair of ENIGMA-Epilepsy, serves on the AES Epilepsy Research Benchmarks Committee and on the ILAE Neuropsychology, Big Data, and MRI taskforces. She also contributes as an editorial board member for Annals of Neurology, Epilepsy & Behavior, and Epilepsy Currents.
Dr. McDonald is a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society and has been an active member since completing an Epilepsy Foundation/AES postdoctoral fellowship in 2002. She is grateful for this early career support from the AES, which was pivotal in launching her career. She has attended every AES Annual Meeting for the past 23 years, demonstrating her strong commitment to the Society and its mission.