Dr Manny Bagary
Dr Bagary graduated from St Marys Hospital/Imperial College Medical School and subsequently trained in psychiatry on the Charing Cross and Maudsley rotations in London. His neuropsychiatry and epilepsy training was spent at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, London and the Chalfont Centre for Epilepsy. He has completed academic posts at the MRC Cyclotron Unit, Royal Postgraduate Medical School/Imperial College and has a PhD in Neurological Sciences from the Institute of Neurology, University College London. Since 2005, Dr Bagary has been lead clinician for the Regional Epilepsy and Sleep Service, based at the Birmingham’s Barberry Centre, overseeing the care of a large cohort of adult patients with complex drug resistant epilepsies with a range of comorbidities.
Manny has a strong interest in novel treatments including AEDs in phase II-IV development. In 2009, he established the first UK ketogenic diet service for adults with drug resistant epilepsy and he has particular expertise in comorbid sleep disorders. Dr Bagary also has a keen interest in standards of care, and with colleagues have published guidelines and/or recommendations on the management of epilepsy in pregnancy, UK epilepsy monitoring units and ketogenic diet in adults with drug resistant epilepsy.
Dr Bagary has served as Treasurer of the ILAE British Branch since 2018 and has recently been elected President of the ILAE British Branch, taking up the role in September. He is also a member of the Council of the faculty of Neuropsychiatry for the Royal College of Psychiatrists and the regional neuropsychiatry representative for the West Midland Division of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Executive Committee. Manny chairs both the Midlands Epilepsy Forum and the Midlands Epilepsy Network. He is also the NIHR clinical research network lead for epilepsy for the West Midlands.
Prof Sallie Baxendale
Prof Baxendale has worked on the epilepsy surgery programs at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and the National Hospital for Neurology & Neurosurgery London since qualifying as a clinical psychologist in 1992. She is currently the Consultant Neuropsychologist on the epilepsy surgery program at the National Hospital for Neurology, Queen Square and has over 160 academic publications in epilepsy. Her research ranges from studies of the neural substrate of cognitive deficits in seizure disorders, to looking at ways in which the epilepsy is (mis) represented in the media and how the stigma associated with the condition can be reduced.
She serves on the editorial boards of three international journals and was elected to serve on the committee of UK ILAE Chapter in 2014. She chairs the ILAE Diagnostic Commission – Neuropsychology Task Force and is the Course Director for the Biannual ILAE Neuropsychology of Epilepsy Training Course. She is a longstanding faculty member of the European Project for the Development of Epilepsy Surgery Programs and coordinates the neuropsychological input for these courses. She regularly lectures in the UK and abroad and has been invited to speak in over 20 countries on neuropsychological aspects of epilepsy. In 2018 she was awarded the Arthur Benton Award by the International Neuropsychological Society in recognition of her outstanding contribution to the field of neuropsychology and was elected to the board of governers of the INS in 2020.
Dr Fahmida Chowdhury
Dr Chowdhury is a Consultant Neurologist/ Neurophysiologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London.
She qualified from Edinburgh Medical School in 2003. She completed a MRC Funded PhD in Epilepsy in 2012 from King’s College, University of London, looking at multimodal endophenotypes (TMS, EEG, MRI) in generalised epilepsy. She trained in Clinical Neurology in London and following CCT undertook a Fellowship in Complex Epilepsy at the National Hospital. She has a special interest in Epilepsy, and in particular presurgical evaluation of medically refractory patients, including intracranial EEG recordings to localize the epileptogenic zone and map cognitive functions. She is the Clinical Lead of the Videotelemetry Unit at the NHNN.
Dr John Craig
Dr Craig is a Consultant Neurologist, based at the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, Northern Ireland. He is Clinical Director for Neurosciences for Northern Ireland. His major research interest is in the management of epilepsy in pregnancy, in particular the effects of anti-epileptic drugs. He is principal investigator of the UK Epilepsy and Pregnancy Register and sits on the Central Programme commission of EURAP – An International Epilepsy and Pregnancy Register. He is an Editorial board member for Seizure – A European Journal of Epilepsy. He has published widely in the field of epilepsy, particularly on the effects of anti-epileptic drugs in pregnancy.
Dr Beate Diehl
Dr Diehl graduated from the Ruprecht-Karls-University Medical School in Heidelberg and pursued her Neurology training at both the Universities of Mainz and Muenster in Germany. She obtained subspecialty training in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at the Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland USA. Subsequently, she also qualified as a Neurologist in the USA and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and American Board of Clinical Neurophysiology. She held a faculty position at the Cleveland Clinic Epilepsy Center from August 2003 until March 2008 when she joined the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery in London as a Consultant Clinical Neurophysiologist.
Her main clinical focus is on the presurgical evaluation of intractable epilepsy patients including intracranial EEG recordings to localize the epileptogenic zone and cortical functions. Some of Beate’s research interests include novel imaging techniques and advanced neurophysiological methods to better delineate the epileptogenic zone and investigating higher cortical functions with direct brain stimulation. Furthermore, she leads research efforts in autonomic and imaging biomarker of SUDEP. She has published extensively and holds active grant funding.
Dr Sofia Eriksson
Dr Sofia Eriksson is a consultant neurologist and honorary associate Professor at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London specialising on epilepsy and neurological sleep disorders. She started her medical career in Göteborg, Sweden, before joining the Department of Clinical and Experimental Epilepsy (DCEE) in London in 1998 as part of her PhD. She was awarded her PhD in 2003 after which she did a post doc in the DCEE.
Her initial research focused on brain malformations and epilepsy and her current research interests focus on the relationship between epilepsy and sleep disorders, in particular NREM parasomnias.
She is the clinical lead for Epilepsy and Neurological Sleep services at the National Hospital and in her clinical practice she sees, investigates and treats patients with epilepsy as well as hypersomnolence and paroxysmal nocturnal events.
Dr Jacqueline Foong
Dr Foong is a Consultant Neuropsychiatrist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and Honorary Associate Professor at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology. Her qualifications include a MBBS, FRCPsych, a MPhil and a MD (Abnormalities in schizophrenia: Evidence from neuropathologically sensitive MRI techniques) both from the University of London. Dr Foong’s research interests are the neuropsychiatric aspects of epilepsy and epilepsy surgery and neuroimaging correlates of psychiatric and cognitive function in neurological disease.