Professor Patrick Kwan 

Department of Neuroscience research groups - Kwan Lab

Patrick Kwan is a clinician-researcher and an international authority in epileptology and antiepileptic drug development. He is a Professor of Neurology in the Department of Neuroscience within the Central Clinical School, and Co-Director of Monash Institute of Medical Engineering, a unique cross-faculty platform that supports research and promotes commercialisation of engineering solutions for unmet clinical needs.

In his clinical role, he is a Consultant Neurologist at Alfred Health with main clinical interest in epilepsy.

He is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences. He was previously Chair of Neurology at the Department of Medicine (Royal Melbourne Hospital), University of Medicine (2011-2017). He served as Chair of the Medical Therapies Commission of the International League Against from 2013 to 2017.

Professor Kwan’s research portfolio encompasses both applied basic science and clinical aspects to improve the treatment outcomes of epilepsy. His research goal is to realise personalised epilepsy management through understanding the long term outcomes, identifying factors that affect treatment response and mechanisms of drug resistance, and discovering novel molecular targets for the treatment and prevention of epilepsy. He has a particular interest in harnessing technologies to solve clinical problems. He supervises a highly multidisciplinary, integrated research team that spans across genomics, human stem cells, animal models, bioengineering, artificial intelligence, bio-databanks and clinical trials. He has extensive national and international collaborations in academia, hospitals and MedTech industry. 

He has published more than 340 peer-reviewed articles in leading journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Lancet Neurology, JAMA Neurology and Brain, that have been cited for more than 31,000 times. H-index 73. He ranks top 0.01% of more than 120,000 published authors worldwide on epilepsy. Twitter: @patrick_kwan

1. Use of Artificial intelligence (AI) models in epilepsy including prediction of treatment outcomes, analysis of imaging, EEG, genomics, wearable data, and the ethical dilemmas (representative article: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2795867)

2. Stem cell-derived neuronal platform for disease modelling and personalised drug discovery (https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2021-articles/transforming-the-paradigm-of-epilepsy-care-with-precision-medicine2)

3. Biosensors for point-of-care molecular diagnosis and pharmacogenetic screening (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2018.01.063; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2022.114410; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94652-0)

4. Next generation non-invasive wearables for seizure and health monitoring (https://doi.org/10.1212/WNL.0000000000200794)