EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE:
Monday, Dec. 7, 2020
6:30 p.m. EST
CHICAGO - Mary Lou Smith, Ph.D., C.Psych. presented the Fritz E. Dreifuss lecture
during the Presidential Symposium at the AES2020 event of the American Epilepsy
Society (AES). Dr. Smith spoke on Cognitive outcomes after surgery in children.
Dr. Smith is a Professor in the Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
Mississauga, and a Senior Associate Scientist in the Neurosciences and Mental Health
Program of the Research Institute at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. In her
more than 30 years of research and clinical work she has led seminal studies of the roles
of the frontal and temporal lobes in memory. Her current research examines the
cognitive and behavioural co-morbidities associated with pediatric onset epilepsy, the
long term cognitive and psychosocial outcomes of epilepsy surgery in childhood, and the
key psychosocial, family, cognitive and neurological variables that determine quality of
life in children with epilepsy.
Active in advocacy, education and professional service with the International League
Against Epilepsy (ILAE), the AES, and the Canadian League Against Epilepsy (CLAE), she
is a member of the ILAE Neuropsychology (Diagnostic Strategies Commission), Pediatric
Psychiatry (Commission on Pediatrics) and Pediatric Epilepsy Severity Scale Task Forces
and is secretary of ILAE North America. She is on the Board of the CLAE, and is the cochair of the executive committee of the Canadian Pediatric Epilepsy Network.
The Dreifuss lecture, funded through the AES Dreifuss Fund, honors the memory of Dr.
Fritz E. Dreifuss, a leading clinical epilepsy specialist, clinical investigator, and former
President of the AES and ILAE. He was mentor to a generation of epilepsy researchers,
and an educator with worldwide influence. His legacy continues as the fellows and
residents he mentored, in turn, have become a network carrying on his work.