Dave F. Clarke, MD Receives Penry Award from the American Epilepsy Society

Dave F. Clarke, MD, professor of neurology and pediatrics at The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School and holder of the Kozmetsky Family Endowed Chair in Pediatric Epilepsy, received the J. Kiffin Penry Award for Excellence in Epilepsy Care by the American Epilepsy Society (AES) at its recent annual meeting in Orlando, Florida. Clarke leads the Comprehensive Pediatric Epilepsy Center in the UT Health Austin Pediatric Neurosciences program at Dell Children’s Medical Center.

The J. Kiffin Penry Award is given each year by the AES to honor the late Dr. Penry’s lifelong commitment to improving the care of individuals with epilepsy, promoting epilepsy research, and encouraging scholarly and educational activities and mentorship. Penry was chief of the Clinical Epilepsy Section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and later associate dean for research at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He also began the still-running, highly regarded Penry Epilepsy MiniFellowship, an immersion program that, in the last four decades, has boosted epilepsy management skills for thousands of practitioners.

Clarke emphasizes medical and surgical management of drug-resistant epilepsy. Additionally, he has long championed efforts to broadly improve epilepsy treatment and reduce disparities in epilepsy care regionally and internationally via outreach programs in Texas, Africa, and the Caribbean island countries. He is a member of the North American Commission of the International League Against Epilepsy, the Epilepsy Leadership Council Steering Committee, the International Affairs Committee of the Child Neurology Society, and the American Epilepsy Society Advocacy Task Force as well as secretary-treasurer of the National Association of Epilepsy Centers Board. In 2021, Clarke received the Ambassador for Epilepsy Award jointly from the International League Against Epilepsy and the International Bureau for Epilepsy in recognition of his outstanding contributions to furthering the cause of epilepsy internationally.