Career Center AES Connect

William Davis Gaillard, MD, FAES

AES President 2020
NIH Service 1993-1996

William Davis GaillardWilliam Davis Gaillard  received his BA from Yale College in History (Classical) (1980)  and his MD from Yale School of  Medicine (1985). He completed two  years  of  pediatric internship/residency at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (1987) before completing training in adult and  child neurology at Johns Hopkins Hospital (1990). He then completed  a  three year fellowchip in Epilepsy, Neurophysiology, and Neuroimaging at NINDS, NIH  Clinical Center (1993) with Dr. William H. Theodore and Dr Sussum Sato. In 1993 he joined the medical staff at Children’s National Hospital and the faculty of George Washington University. He became professor of neurology and pedatrics with tenure, director of the Comprehnesive Epilepsy Program, and chair of neurology, epilepsy, and neurophysiology. He holds the endowed Chair, Professor of Epilepsy and Neurophysiology, in addition to being adjunct professor of neurology at Georgetown University and adjunct professor of hearing and speech at University of Maryland College Park.  

 

WD Gaillard is an internationally recognized for his work in pediatric epilepsy and imaging, work  that  has transformed  clinical care and investigated the effect of epilepsy on brain structure and function. Working at CNH allowd a long and productive collaboration with Dr. William Theodore and the Intramural Clinical Epilepsy Section and extramural NINDS, initially with a K08 training award, and then as a  guest researcher and Child Neurology/Epiepsy Consultant. These  investigations examined the effect of epilepsy on brain structure, metabolism, and blood flow in children and adults. He  conducted the first cognitive studies in children with fMRI. His corpus of work established to utility and effectiveness of  mapping language networks in planning epilepsy surgery, including outcomes, and correlation with the Wada test, and invasive mapping. He established the utility MRI (in contrast to CT) for the evaluation of children with new onset seizures and epilepsy that are part of standard care. Later work has used fMRI to examine the nature and limitations to early brain placticity for cognitive systems. Current work employs rsfMRI to examine the local and network properties of  focal epilepsy and seizure focus identification. 

At CNH he directs an accomplished  multidisciplinary team of pediatric epilepsy specialists and translational scientists to care for children and young adults with epilepsy from the onset of seizures, through novel therapeutic interventions, medication trials, and, when appropriate, surgery. His work has been continuously funded by the NIH, NSF, CDC, and several philanthropic foundations. His group plays a leading role in national and international collaborative efforts, databases, and registries in addition to industry and federal clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and device development.    

In addition to serving as treasurer and president of the American Epilepsy Society he has served as Chair fo the ILAE Diganostics  Commision, and member of the Pedatric Commision and the North American Epilepsy Commission in addition to several committees and task forces. He has published over 300 peer reviewed pulications and over 80 chapters/invited publications. He has trained many fellows, post docs, and junior faculty who lead successful academic and clinical careers. Awards include the AES Clinical Research Recognition Award, the Child Neurology Martha Bridge Denckla Award, and the ILAE Ambassador Award.