EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE:
Monday, Dec. 7, 2020
6:30 p.m. EST
CHICAGO - Miriam Meisler, Ph.D. was presented with the 2020 Basic Science Research
Award during the AES2020 event of the American Epilepsy Society (AES). The Research
Recognition Awards are the Society's highest research awards, to encourage and
recognize active basic science and clinical investigators whose research contributes
importantly to understanding and conquering epilepsy.
Dr. Meisler is the Myron Levine Distinguished University Professor, Professor of Human
Genetics and Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School. She
earned her PhD at The Ohio State University in Physiological Chemistry and carried out
postdoctoral training funded by a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Roswell Park Cancer
Institute.
For the past 25 years, Dr. Meisler’s lab has focused on the role of sodium channel
mutations in epilepsy, studying human genetic disorders and mouse models that are
relevant to human health. The lab most recently identified VAC14, a cause of pediatric
neurological decline.
Dr. Meisler served as the first president of the International Mammalian Genome Society,
a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Senior Fellow
in the Michigan Society of Fellows. She received an Eleanor Roosevelt Cancer Fellowship,
and from the University of Michigan the Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award, Myron
Levine Distinguished University Professorship in Human Genetics, Sarah Goddard Power
Award, and Distinguished Faculty Lectureship Award. She has also served on the AES
Scientific Program Committee, the External Advisory Board of the Center for Molecular
Genetics at Wayne State University, the American Society of Human Genetics Program
Committee, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Dravet Syndrome Foundation.