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Dr. Heidi Kirsch is a specialist in mapping epileptic activity and functional areas in the brain using a combination of magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) for the purposes of planning epilepsy surgery and other types of brain surgery. She is the Clinical Director and Associate Director of Research for the UCSF Biomagnetic Imaging Laboratory (MEG lab). She is a specialist in epilepsy treatment. In her research, she studies new methods of brain mapping and the ways in which seizures spread in the brain. She also works on a multicenter clinical trial of gamma knife (radiosurgery) versus standard brain surgery for temporal lobe epilepsy. She is board certified in neurology and clinical neurophysiology.
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, epilepsy and cognitive neurology. During her fellowship, she was a volunteer to the Cognitive Neuroscience Section of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is a member 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. She joined UCSF Medical Center in 2002 and is a UCSF associate professor of clinical neurology and radiology and biomedical imaging.