European Young Investigator Award 2018

Birgit Frauscher is an Austrian neurologist specialized in Epilepsy and Sleep Medicine. She did her medical training, residency, and subspecialisation at Innsbruck Medical University. She obtained her board certification in neurology in 2008 and has diplomas in EEG, EMG/NCV, and sleep. From 2013 – 2015, she was awarded a two-year Schroedinger fellowship to spend a visiting professorship with Jean Gotman and Francois Dubeau at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University to specialize on intracranial EEG. Since July 2017, she is an attending epileptologist and associate professor of neurology at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University.

Birgit's clinical interest is in i) the management of people with therapy-refractory epilepsy, ii) the interpretation of EEG including EMU, intracranial EEG, and polysomnography, and iii) the differential diagnosis between sleep-related hypermotor epilepsy and parasomnias. Her research interest is in i) the development of novel seizure-independent EEG markers for the epileptogenic zone in order to achieve a more accurate diagnosis of epilepsy, ii) the investigation of the important interactions between sleep and epilepsy, and iii) the use of the unique possibility of invasive intracranial EEG for studying brain physiology during wakefulness and sleep in order to better delineate normal from abnormal intracranial EEG activity. She is the author of more than 125 peer-reviewed papers in the field of epilepsy and sleep. In 2015, she was awarded the Ernst-Niedermeyer Prize of the Austrian Epilepsy Society for her contribution to epilepsy research.