Dr. Laura A. Kirkpatrick

Bilal Sitwat is a Pediatric Neurologist and a Neurologist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Dr. Sitwat is rated as an Advanced provider by MediFind in the treatment of Absence Seizure. His top areas of expertise are Myoclonic Epilepsy, Seizures, Epilepsy in Children, and West Syndrome. Dr. Sitwat is currently accepting new patients.

William Welch, MD, is a neurologist and is certified in neurology and epilepsy with a special qualification in child neurology by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He is director of Epilepsy Neurostimulation at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and is an assistant professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He received his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma and completed his residency and fellowship UPMC. Dr. Welch’s clinical and research interests include the treatment of epilepsy with vagus nerve stimulation, responsive neurostimulation, and deep brain stimulation. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and is a member of the Child Neurology Society, the American Epilepsy Society, and the American Academy of Neurology. View the full list of Dr. Welch’s publications on PubMed. Dr. Welch is rated as an Experienced provider by MediFind in the treatment of Absence Seizure. His top areas of expertise are Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome (LGS), Seizures, Absence Seizure, Epilepsy, and Deep Brain Stimulation.

Yoshimi Sogawa, MD, MS, is a board-certified pediatric neurologist who serves as director for Clinical Research in the Division of Child Neurology and director of the Early Onset Epileptic Encephalopathy Clinic atUPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. She is also an associate professor in the Division of Child Neurology in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Dr. Sogawa received her medical degree from Niigata University School of Medicine in Japan. She then completed her residency training in pediatrics and neurology at Schneider Children’s Hospital in Long Island, New York, and fellowship training in clinical neurophysiology (EEG) at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She was awarded an NIH sponsored Neurological Sciences Academic Development Award (K12, NS048856) in 2009. During this period, she earned a master’s degree from the Clinical Research Training Program at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Since joining UPMC Children’s Hospital in 2012, Dr. Sogawa has assumed clinical responsibility for the majority of patients with infantile spasms, a rare and intractable epilepsy in infancy. She is conducting a longitudinal study of their developmental outcomes. Dr. Sogawa designed the Early Onset Epileptic Encephalopathies Clinic to be patient and family-centered, flexible, and comprehensive. Common neurological tests such as EEG are typically scheduled on the day of a patient’s clinic visit to minimize trips to the hospital. Dr. Sogawa has been committed to research and scholarly activity in the field of pediatric epilepsy and child neurology and has published more than twenty peer-reviewed studies, invited reviews, and book chapters. On an international level, Dr. Sogawa has served on the Task Force on Epilepsy Syndromes under the commission on Classification and Terminology of the International League against Epilepsy (ILAE), the leading international organization for epilepsy care. Dr. Sogawa has been a collaborator for several NIH funded studies and site-primary investigator for medication trials on children with epilepsy. View Dr. Sogawa's full list of publications from PubMed. Dr. Sogawa is rated as an Advanced provider by MediFind in the treatment of Absence Seizure. Her top areas of expertise are Epilepsy, West Syndrome, Spasmus Nutans, and Epilepsy in Children.