Dr. Karen S. Wilcox is Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology and Director of the contract site of the internationally recognized NINDS -funded Epilepsy Therapy Screening Program at the University of Utah.

Dr. Wilcox received her Ph.D. in physiology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993 and remained there as a research associate until 1998, when she moved to Utah. Her areas of research interests include basic mechanisms of pharmacoresistant epilepsy, the role of inflammation in seizure generation and epileptogenesis, and the mechanism of action of anti-seizure drugs where she has made major contributions to the field. She has served on the Scientific Advisory Board for Citizen’s United for Research in Epilepsy, was a member of the Board of Directors for the American Epilepsy Society (AES), and has served as an Epilepsy Benchmarks Steward for the NINDS Office of Science Policy and Planning.

Dr. Wilcox is a member of several editorial review boards and has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for journals in a number of areas, including pharmacology, neuroscience, and epilepsy and continues to be an active member of AES, serving on numerous committees. She has completed terms as a regular member of two study sections at NIH, continues to serve in an ad hoc capacity as a reviewer for NINDS, and reviews grants for a number of foundations. The goal of her research is to improve the lives of patients with epilepsy through the development of innovative therapies.