ORLANDO, Fla. ― Bruce Hermann, PhD, FAES, was presented with the 2023 Founders Award during the 2023 Annual Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society (AES). One of the most prestigious awards given by the Society, the Founders Award, established in 1966, recognizes members who have a record of lifetime contributions and accomplishments related to epilepsy. The award is funded by the AES Lennox and Lombroso Trust.
Dr. Hermann, a clinical neuropsychologist, began his academic career in 1978 in the Department of Neurology at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Chicago, where his research focused on the psychiatric and behavioral complications of child and adult epilepsies. In 1985, he joined the Semmes-Murphey Clinic and Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosurgery at the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center, Memphis, where his focus was the neuropsychology of epilepsy surgery. In 1995, he joined the Department of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, heading the Charles Matthews Neuropsychology Section, and is currently professor emeritus.
At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his research team focused on three areas: 1) the cognitive, psychiatric, and neuroimaging abnormalities in adults with chronic temporal lobe epilepsy and their prospective course; 2) the natural history of cognitive, psychiatric, and neuroimaging abnormalities in children with new onset epilepsies and the effects of epilepsy on neurodevelopmental trajectories; and 3) the cognitive and brain-aging processes in middle-aged and older persons with epilepsy.
Dr. Hermann has been a longstanding AES member having served two terms on the board of directors, from 1997-1999 and 2014-2016, and recently on the Nominating Committee from 2020-2022. He has also delivered the Lennox lecture in 2005, received the AES Distinguished Service Award in 2014, and became an AES fellow in 2016.