Juan Luis Alcala Zermeno, MD

Dr. Alcala specializes in the care of patients with ongoing seizures that have not responded to medication and who may benefit from epilepsy surgery. He also works with patients who continue to have seizures despite prior epilepsy surgery, helping them explore further surgical options.

He is passionate about ensuring that patients and families understand every aspect of the presurgical workup, what each test is looking for, what the results mean, and how they shape the recommendation. He collaborates closely with Drs. Youngerman and Feldstein, epilepsy neurosurgeons, and Drs. Hamberger and Cole, epilepsy neuropsychologists, so that each patient's evaluation reflects the full team's expertise.

His research addresses a persistent gap in epilepsy care: although surgery offers the best chance of seizure freedom for people with drug-resistant epilepsy, very few are ever evaluated for it. Dr. Alcala studies which patients are referred and why, and how shared decision-making — conversations in which patients and clinicians weigh the options together — can improve the way these decisions are made. He has published on invasive neuromodulation strategies and outcomes as well as resective epilepsy surgery outcomes.

After obtaining his medical degree from the Universidad de Guadalajara with the Dean's Mention of Outstanding Academic Performance, Dr. Alcala completed Adult Neurology residency training at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by fellowships in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He received the Young Investigator Award from the American Epilepsy Society in 2023 and leads the Mentorship Task Force of the International League Against Epilepsy's Young Epilepsy Section. He is a native Spanish speaker.