Simona Balestrini MD, PhD

Simona Balestrini is a consultant neurologist at the Chalfont Centre for Epilepsy and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, UCLH, and an honorary senior lecturer at UCL/Institute of Neurology. She qualified in medicine and completed her specialist training in neurology at the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona, Italy.

During her specialty training, she undertook a research fellowship at UCL with a focus on epilepsy genetics, and a further fellowship at the “Claudio Munari” Epilepsy Surgery Unit, Niguarda Hospital, Milan, Italy, with a focus on neurophysiology and surgical treatment of epilepsy. She subsequently was awarded a PhD for her research on SUDEP.

Balestrini has a special interest in epilepsy genetics and runs epilepsy clinics and epilepsy genomics clinics at the Chalfont Centre. Her current research focuses on the application of genomics to understand the causes, course, and treatment response of epilepsy.