ORLANDO, Fla. ― Aristea S. Galanopoulou, MD, PhD, FANA, FAES, was presented with the 56th Lombroso Lecturer Award during the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES). The Lombroso Lecture is given each year by a clinician or scientist who is considered an outstanding investigator in the field of epilepsy research. The lecture and award are supported by the AES Lennox and Lombroso Trust. Dr. Galanopoulou presented her lecture “The Path to Personalized Treatments for Epilepsies — Translation, Biomarkers and the Role of the Community.”
Dr. Galanopoulou is director of the Laboratory of Developmental Epilepsy and professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY She received her MD from the Medical School of Athens, Greece; PhD from McGill University, Canada; and her neurology and clinical neurophysiology training from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
Her research focuses on mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis and identifying new age-, sex, syndrome-specific therapies for seizures and epileptic syndromes that appear early in life, by using age- and syndrome-specific animal models. These studies have identified several promising new therapies for infantile spasms, including treatments with disease-modifying potential, which are currently under development. Dr. Galanopoulou is also leading preclinical National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Department of Defense-funded multicenter studies for biomarkers and treatments that prevent posttraumatic epilepsy.
Dr. Galanopoulou has been co-chair of the AES/International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) Joint Translational Research Task Force and chair of ILAE’s Neurobiology Commission. She is the editor-in-chief of Epilepsia Open and associate editor of Neurobiology of Disease. She received the Ambassador for Epilepsy Award from ILAE in 2015, the Saul R. Korey Award in Translational Science and Medicine from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 2017, and was the 2023 Isabelle Rapin Lecturer for Montefiore Health System, the University Hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York.