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PEER Grant Awarded

Congratulations to Dr. Eamonn Kennedy for being awarded a IDA Level II “PEER” grant by the Department of Defense's Epilepsy Research Program titled: Phenotypes of Epilepsy Etiology and Drug Resistance. His grant was accepted for funding, scoring 2.0 (excellent).  

The award will be used to explore patterns in three ongoing and pre-existing studies that will produce “risk scores” for the development of epilepsy following head trauma, particularly among military personnel. As Dr Kennedy explains “We really need to develop a robust risk scoring system for the likelihood of epilepsy emergence after TBI (traumatic brain injury). The amazing part is that the DoD has funded these incredible studies over the years, and the data is all there. What we need now is to dive into those rich studies led by pioneers like Dr David Cifu at VCU, and identify what prospectively predicts risk for epilepsy following head trauma to get people diagnosed early and targeted with the right treatments up-front.” 

This is also Dr. Kennedy’s first independent grant submission. Dr. Kennedy is a Research Assistant Professor in the Division of Epidemiology. Dr. Kennedy received his B.S degree in Physics, MS in Nanophotonics, and PhD in Physics from the University College Dublin. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the Harper Cancer Research Institute at the University of Notre Dame. 

Dr. Kennedy’s research interests are machine learning for health, high throughput screening and informatics, nanopores, biosensors, and molecular information, and advanced imaging methods (liquid cell EM, IR nanoimaging) 

Congratulations Dr. Kennedy! 

Dr. Eamonn Kennedy