Wendyl D'Souza

Professor Wendyl D'Souza is a neurologist, epileptologist, and academic in the Department of Medicine at St Vincent's Hospital, University of Melbourne, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. He serves as Research Group Leader for Clinical Epilepsy Epidemiology within Melbourne Medical School. His academic background includes an MBChB from the University of Otago (1988), Master of Public Health (1999), Fellowship of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (2001), and PhD in epilepsy epidemiology from Massey University, New Zealand (2009).

D'Souza's career history features leadership as Head of Epilepsy Services at The Alfred Hospital (2002-2007). Currently, he holds positions as Head of Epilepsy Services, Director of Neurology Advanced Training, and Deputy Director of Neurology at St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne. With over twenty years of experience, he manages patients with seizures, epilepsy, and mimickers across all ages, addressing implications for education, driving, pregnancy, work, and travel. His research specializations cover idiopathic generalised epilepsies, psychogenic non-epileptic attacks, real-world studies on antiseizure medications and devices, autoimmune epilepsies, and privacy-preserving data linkage to map and improve epilepsy health outcomes including psychiatric comorbidities, injuries, cognition, and mortality. The research group emphasizes electrophysiology, neural networks in idiopathic generalised epilepsy, seizure localisation, detection, prediction, and modifiable prognostic factors. Key publications include "Prediction of seizure likelihood with a long-term, implanted seizure advisory system in patients with drug-resistant epilepsy: a first-in-man study" (2013), "Epileptiform K-Complexes and Sleep Spindles: An Underreported Phenomenon in Genetic Generalized Epilepsy" (2020), "Trajectories of quality of life, anxiety and depressive symptomatology, and health-related work productivity after first seizure events" (2026), and studies on breathing interventions for functional seizures and seizure cycles in pediatric epilepsy. His contributions have over 7,000 citations on Google Scholar, impacting clinical practice and public health in epilepsy.

Professional Email: wendyl@unimelb.edu.au