Engineering’s Nrupen Pakalapati receives prestigious epilepsy research award
Nrupen Pakalapati, a researcher in ӰƵ’s Department of Biomedical Engineering, has been named among eight winners of the American Epilepsy Society’s (AES) 2025 Grass Foundation Young Investigator Award. This highly competitive award recognizes outstanding young investigators whose basic and clinical neuroscience research shows significant promise in the field of epilepsy.
Selected from a pool of more than 1,500 submissions, Pakalapati’s abstract, titled “Single White Matter Electrode for Bilateral Epileptic Activity Detection and Monitoring,” highlights research that introduces a more efficient and less invasive method for monitoring epileptic seizures. Pakalapati conducted this research under the supervision of Dominique Durand, professor of biomedical engineering.
Pakalapti will receive a $1,000 stipend, complimentary registration for the AES Annual Meeting and special recognition in the AES program book and at the conference poster session.
About the study
Detecting the source of seizures often requires implanting multiple electrodes, a complex and invasive procedure. Pakalapati’s work explores a novel approach: using a single electrode placed in the brain’s white matter—specifically in tracts such as the corpus callosum which connects the two brain hemispheres. These tracts act as major communication highways, making them an ideal strategic point for "listening in" on widespread brain activity.
The study demonstrated that a single white matter electrode could reliably detect seizure activity originating from either hemisphere of the brain. Additionally, the signal strength recorded from the electrode correlated directly with seizure intensity, suggesting it could be a powerful tool for real-time monitoring.
This method could dramatically reduce the need for multiple electrodes and the challenge of precisely locating seizure foci. Pakalapati’s findings also pave the way for advanced, closed-loop therapeutic systems, where a device could not only detect the onset of a seizure, but also deliver targeted stimulation to potentially stop it.
