Dr. Heidi Kirsch is a specialist in epilepsy treatment (epileptology) and is board certified in epilepsy, neurology and clinical neurophysiology. She joined UCSF Medical Center in 2002 and is a Professor of Clinical Neurology and Radiology and Biomedical Imaging. She is the Clinical Director of the UCSF Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory (UCSF's MEG lab), where she works mapping epileptic activity and functional areas in the brain to plan epilepsy and other types of brain surgery. In her research, she studies new methods of brain mapping and the ways in which seizures spread in the brain. She also directs the Foundational Science in F2 in the UCSF School of Medicine Bridges Curriculum, where students integrate basic science principles into clinical reasoning.

Kirsch earned an undergraduate degree magna cum laude at Harvard and a master's degree in Health and Medical Sciences and a medical degree from the Joint Medical Program offered by the University of California at Berkeley and UCSF. She completed an internship at Georgetown University and a neurology residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she was a fellow in clinical neurophysiology and epilepsy. During her fellowship, she was a volunteer to the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a member of the board of directors of the American Clinical Magentoencephalography Society and past president of the board of directors of the Epilepsy Foundation of Northern California, and a member of the American Neurological Association, the American Academy of Neurology and the American Epilepsy Society. She serves as an ad hoc reviewer for several journals, including the Annals of Neurology and Neurology.