This story is part of a series published for UNITE to CURE Epilepsy 2025
I get to live my dream of pursuing scientific breakthroughs in epilepsy research because of the CURE Epilepsy donors. As a CURE Epilepsy grantee and leader of the Neural Signal Processing and Modeling Lab at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, I get to lead research that could change lives. Our work is urgent, and it would not be possible without CURE Epilepsy funding. Your support has already helped my team make real progress and could make the next breakthrough a reality.
My team is developing a less invasive way to figure out how and where seizures begin in someone’s brain. We are using intracranial EEG and MEG data to build computational models of patient brains that we can then virtually stimulate to find hyperactive brain regions faster and with less patient-generated data. Our goal is to reduce the amount of time it takes to determine if a patient is a candidate for surgery to a matter of days instead of weeks.
We don’t do this work alone. CURE Epilepsy donors like you are the reason I’m able to pursue this research. With federal funding for epilepsy research in jeopardy, support for organizations like CURE Epilepsy is essential to keep innovative science moving forward. Science takes more than ideas; it also takes investment.
Today, your investment into research that pushes boundaries and gives hope will be doubled up to $35,000. Every dollar moves us forward. I hope you will help us get there.
Thanks for advancing the research, y’all!
Rachel June Smith, PhD
CURE Epilepsy Grantee, University of Alabama at Birmingham Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Neural Signals Processing and Modeling Lab Director