James Cereghino, MD, FAES

James J. Cereghino, MD, 85, passed away December 1, 2022, in Portland, Oregon. He was born in Portland on October 27, 1937. He is a distinguished alumnus of Cleveland High School in Portland, Oregon, and, at the time of his death, was Professor Emeritus of the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Dr. Cereghino obtained a bachelor’s degree from Portland State College in 1959, an MD from the University of Oregon Medical School in 1964, and a master’s degree in neurophysiology from Linfield University, McMinnville, Oregon in 1971. He completed both his medical internship (1964-65) and his residency in neurology (1965-68) at Good Samaritan Hospital in Portland, Oregon. During this time, he had special rotations at the University of Washington in Seattle (neuropathology) and the University of California San Francisco (child neurology).

In 1970, Dr. Cereghino joined the Epilepsy Branch of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland; this program had been founded in the late 1960s by James Kiffin Penry, MD. Dr. Cereghino honed his skills as an expert epileptologist under the direction of Dr. Penry, and in 1985 Dr. Cereghino would himself become Chief of the Epilepsy Branch, directing a multimillion-dollar extramural research program in basic and clinical epilepsy for eight years. 

He was an active member of a number professional and lay organizations, including the American Academy of Neurology, the American Neurological Association, the Epilepsy Foundation of America, Epilepsy International, International Bureau for Epilepsy, the International League Against Epilepsy, and the Oregon Medical Association. He served as president of the American Epilepsy Society in 1984. Read more about Dr. Cereghino here.