AES President
Dennis D. Spencer, M.D., is the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery, Yale University School of Medicine. His research is focused on defining the cellular and metabolic mechanisms that sustain epileptogenic substrates He is also internationally recognized in the surgical treatment of epilepsy.
Dr. Spencer heads an interdisciplinary team of basic scientists and research clinicians in the neurobiological study of human epileptic tissue. Research techniques used in the study include in vivo and in vitro electrophysiology and microdialysis, immuno-histochemistry, confocal and EM microscopy, molecular biology and dynamic imaging including 7T MRS, fMR, and 3D modeling coregistration of these studies, plus PET, ictal SPECT and electrophysiology.
Dr. Spencer received his medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, and completed a neurosurgical residency at Yale. He developed a widely used surgical approach to temporal lobe epilepsy and helped pioneer stereotactic cellular replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease. At present he is also chair of the ACGME residency review committee (RRC) for neurosurgery and president of the Society of Neurological Surgeons.
A member of the AES board of directors since 2003, Dr. Spencer has served on the AES Surgery Task Force and other AES committees. He also served as a member of the planning committee for the 2007 NIH-sponsored Curing Epilepsy Conference, a meeting of leading physicians and neuroscientists that established benchmarks for the future in epilepsy research.