https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/our-people/staff-z/rod-scott/

Rod Scott

Rod Scott is Professor of Paediatric Neuroscience at UCL Institute of Child Health, Professor and Vice-Chair (Research) in Neurological Sciences at the University of Vermont (USA) and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Neurologist at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London.

Professor Scott straddles the interface between basic and clinical science and lead multidisciplinary research projects, with scientific findings that potentially have major clinical implications. His strategy for investigating outcomes associated with epilepsy is to use a variety of tools in disease models, epilepsy-specific human cohorts and community-based cohorts. This strategy aims to identify priority disease areas to drive innovative research, as well as translating research findings from bench to bedside.

Specialisms

Childhood epilepsy, cognitive and behavioural impairments, status epilepticus.

Qualifications

Professor Scott graduated MBChB from the University of Zimbabwe in 1988, trained in paediatric neurology in London and gained his PhD in 1998.

Research Interests

Current studies include:

  • Addressing medium and long-term cognitive and epilepsy outcomes in children with a history of convulsive status epilepticus using neuropsychological and MRI based methods.

  • Characterising the nature of cognitive impairments in a population based cohort.

  • Establishing the relative impacts of seizures, the cause of the seizures and treatments on cognitive outcomes in children and rodent models of epilepsy. 

  • Investigating the relationships between neural network measures and cognition in children and rodents and whether intervention improves outcomes in a way that is related to change in neural networks. 

He has been instrumental in successful PhD defenses in eight people to date and currently mentors a further four graduate students. In addition he has mentored four post-doctoral fellows. The work carried out by these students and post-doctoral fellows has been published in high-impact general journals (eg Lancet) and specialty journals (Lancet Neurology, Journal of Neuroscience, Brain, Epilepsia). In addition, he has statistics expertise which he applies to the design of studies and to data analysis. He has served as a grant reviewer for USA (NIH), British (AMR), Irish and New Zealand-based grant giving bodies and peer review for many journals. He is an associate editor at BMC Neurology and on the editorial board at Epilepsia.