The American Epilepsy Society, or AES, has awarded Francisco Javier Guevara-Pantoja, a postdoctoral researcher at UC Riverside, a $50,000 fellowship to investigate in mice the activity of inhibitory neurons in the dentate gyrus during the initiation and termination of seizures. 

The dentate gyrus is a structure within the hippocampal formation of the brain, critical for memory encoding and learning.

“Our findings aim to enhance understanding of the hippocampal circuitry and its alterations associated with epilepsy,” Guevara-Pantoja said.

Guevara-Pantoja, whose advisor is Viji Santhakumar, a professor of molecular, cell and systems biology, will receive the fellowship at the next AES annual meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in early December 2025.

Separately, Santhakumar received an AES BRIDGE Summer Research Internship Grant that will support a summer internship experience for a yet-to-be-selected undergraduate student or recent graduate interested in epilepsy as a field of study. The grant offers up to $11,500, with $10,000 for an intern stipend, housing, and program expenses, and $1,500 to support required attendance at the AES annual meeting. As mentor, Santhakumar will encourage the trainee’s interest in basic, clinical, and translational research.

Santhakumar has more than 20 years of experience in neural circuit, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury research. The selected trainee will work on a research project that will test whether dendritic inhibition affects how seizures start and stop differently in healthy and epileptic dentate gyrus.