Newswise — Today the American Epilepsy Society (AES) announced Alan B. McMillan, Ph.D., Principal Investigator in the Department of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, as the recipient of a 2015 AES Seed Grant. Dr. McMillan’s winning proposal seeks to obtain early preliminary data of neurodegeneration in chronic epilepsy using simultaneous Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging.
Dr. McMillan’s research experience has focused on a wide range of advanced acquisition, reconstruction, and processing techniques spanning many areas of MR imaging including the investigation of epilepsy in both adults and children with epilepsy using voxel-based morphometry methods to detect structural abnormalities.
Dr. McMillan’s team hypothesizes that the cognitive, psychiatric, and somatic comorbidities of chronic epilepsy are associated with accelerated brain aging. Dr. McMillan will collaborate with Bruce P. Hermann, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. This award will allow their team to collect the first ever data in the study of degenerative tau protein deposition in chronic epilepsy patients in combination with advanced MR imaging. This funding will allow Dr. McMillan and Dr. Hermann to obtain critical preliminary data to pursue larger federal grant funding opportunities.
The AES Seed Grant Program is intended to foster collaborative interactions between two or more established investigators to make future grants related to epilepsy more competitive for larger awards, and to fuel multi-investigator projects.
About the American Epilepsy SocietyThe American Epilepsy Society (AES) is the largest and most active non-profit medical and scientific society devoted to issues surrounding the epilepsies. Our individual members are professionals engage in both research and clinical care for people with epilepsy from private practice, academia and government. For more than 75 years, AES has been unlocking the potential of the clinical and research community by creating a dynamic global clinical care through the exchange of knowledge, by providing education and by furthering the advancement of the profession.
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