Directory
This Directory includes Faculty, Staff, Students, and Alumni selectable by category, search or alphabetical by last name. Over 110 students have graduated from the Department of Biomedical Informatics (25+ PhD, 50+ MS, 25+ Certificate). The diversity of careers available to DBMI alumnus is evident in their biographies. Many of our graduates are teaching and performing research in academic institutions, such as Vanderbilt University, Arizona State University, and New York University while others have entered private industry with companies such as Cerner Corporation and Boston Scientific; some have positions in government agencies, such as the NIH and AHRQ, while others are at major medical centers, serving in roles such as Chief Medical Information Officer. We maintain a database of the career paths of our graduates. If you are an alumnus, please contact us if you would like to submit or update information!
Wesley T. Kerr
Biography
Wesley T. Kerr, MD, PhD’s research focuses on how data and statistics can be used to make better medical decisions. As a young clinician-scientist, he chose to focus his research career on database building, data processing and machine learning applied to health data to address important clinical challenges. The first clinical challenge was the question of “are these events epileptic seizures?” by building a database of more that 1500 patients with video-EEG diagnosed events. Dr. Kerr developed computer-aided diagnostic tools based on machine learning statistics to differentiate between patients with epileptic and functional seizures, otherwise known as psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), using clinical information, EEG, FDG-PET and MRI. His Functional Seizures Likelihood Score (FSLS) is the only clinical score to differentiate between epilepsy and functional seizures that has been validated both prospectively and at an external center.
As Dr. Kerr’s clinical career has progressed, he’s become passionate about using data and statistics to improve patient care for those with epilepsy. Through collaborations with others, he’s been the statistical author or co-author on manuscripts re-analyzing prior clinical trials for epilepsy, evaluating barriers to surgical evaluation for medication resistant epilepsy, and risk factors for Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP). Dr. Kerr has been awarded two grants to re-analyze up to 34 clinical trials for epilepsy using a time-to-event design.
Education & Training
Fellowship, University of Michigan, Epilepsy
Residency, University of California (LA), Neurology
Internship, Eisenhower Health (Rancho Mirage), Internal Medicine
MD, PhD, University of California (LA), Medicine & Biomathematics
BA, University of Pennsylvania