Van Miller, M.D., Ph.D., Medical Co-director (1998-2002) Dr. Van Miller is a child neurologist at the Texas Child Neurology Group. He specializes in the neurological problems of newborn infants, including brain malformations such as holoprosencephaly. He is current in private practice in Dallas, Texas. 

Holly Wise, Research Coordinator (1998-2000) Holly was one of the first research coordinators for the Carter Centers. She was also instrumental in planning and producing the HPE Video, "Living with Hope." She is now working on AIDS reseach. 

Erica Pike, Database Coordinator (2000-2002)  Erica was a Respiratory Therapist with a long history of taking care of children with respiratory problems. She has been thrilled and excited to be able to be involved with the Carter Centers research into HPE and to help the families dealing with this disorder. She was responsible for coordinating the research information gathered into the international database so that it can be used to learn as much as is possible in the quest for solving the HPE puzzle. She is currently in school pursuing a degree in informations systems. 

Heather Nash (Dountas), National Project Assistant (2002) Heather Nash is a graduate from Saint Mary's College in South Bend, Indiana with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology. She graduated as a member of the TriBeta Honor Biology Society. During her tenure at the Carter Center, she was the project assistant for the National HPE Project and was delighted to be a part of the Carter Center Team striving to assist families with HPE. She also got married and changed her name to Heather Dountas. Currently she has returned to New Mexico to become a Physician Assistant.

Maureen L. Bowman, B.S. Research Assistant
Maureen Bowman is a graduate from Boston College in Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology and a minor in Italian. She worked as a research assistant for the Neurology Department and will be focusing much of her time on the National HPE Project. She was thrilled to be part of the Carter Center Team. She was actively involved with the Carter Center Database, a centralized repository of all of the research data on our HPE patients. She now will fulfill her lifelong dream by starting medical school in 2003. She hopes someday become a Pediatrician. 

Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford
Stanford University Medical Center:

Joseph Pinter, M.D.
Medical Director (1998-1999)
Dr. Pinter was our first Medical Director at Stanford. He helped initiate the Carter Center for Brain Research and led the neuroimaging research projects in collaboration with Dr. A. James Barkovich. He became a faculty member at University of Washington in 1999 and worked at the Children's Hospital, Seattle. He has recently moved back to California, and is on the faculty of Neurology at University of California, Davis in Sacramento, California. 

Lauren Plawner, M.D.
Neurodevelopmental Fellow (1998-2002)
Dr. Plawner is a graduate of Cornell University and Yale Medical School. She completed her pediatric residency training at UCSF. She was the first clinical fellow for the Carter Center Holoprosencephaly clinic at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. She is currently a child neurology resident at Stanford, but is still actively participating in clinical evaluations and research at the Carter Center. Her research involved clinical-neuroradiologic correlation of HPE. Two of her papers on HPE that she presented to the Child Neurology Society Annual Meetings (2000 and 2002) have been awarded the Outstanding Resident Award. She is currently practicing child neurology in San Francisco.

Kennedy Krieger Institute
Baltimore, Maryland:

National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland:

Colleen Campbell (1998-1999, in affiliation with CHOP)

University of California, San Francisco

Erin Simon, MD (1998 - present)
Dr. Simon is currently a radiology faculty member at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She is still actively involved in publishing neuroimaging and neurologic papers on holoprosencephaly. 

A. James Barkovich M.D.
Professor in Residence, Radiology, Pediatrics, Neurology, Neurological Surgery
Chief of Pediatric Neuroradiology

A. James Barkovich, MD, is in charge of Pediatric Neuroradiology in the Section of Neuroradiology, Department of Radiology, University of California San Francisco. Dr Barkovich holds degrees from the University of California, Davis (BS), the University of California, Berkeley (MS) and the George Washington University (MD). He completed his Residency in Radiology at the Letterman Army Medical Center, followed by a fellowship in Neuroradiolgy at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, ending in 1986. He served as Chief of Neuroradiology and Special Procedures at Letterman Army Medical Center until 1989 and has been at UCSF full time since then.

Dr. Barkovich serves UCSF in many capacities including the Pediatric Clinical Research Center advisory committee and the Medical Risk Management Committee. He is past president of the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology and former secretary and President of the American Society of Neuroradiology. He presently serves as second past President of the American Society of Neuroradiology. He is also Chair of the Education Committee of the Neuroradiology/MR Commission of the American College of Radiology.

Dr. Barkovich received the Resident's for outstanding teaching from the Department of Neurology, UCSF in 1990, was elected as one of the Best Doctors of America in 1995, and was selected for Who's Who in Medicine and Health Care in 1996. He was awarded the Goldenson Technology Award by the United Cerebral Palsy Research and Education Foundation in 1998. He is the author of Pediatric Neuroimaging, the definitive textbook of pediatric neuroradiology, which is currently in its 3rd Edition.

He and his colleagues review the neuroimaging studies of every Carter Center patient. The studies are assessed using a scoring scheme, and the results are entered into a central database. Their work has been instrumental in better understanding the neuroimaging features of HPE and identifying a new variant of HPE called Middle Interhemispheric Fusion Variant (MIHF or syntelencephaly). 

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey: