Fellowship award winners announced

Parkinson Society is pleased to announce that, commencing July 1, 2009, fellowships for post-residency training, have been awarded to:

• Dr. Manon Bouchard (one year)
• Dr. Amitabh Gupta (one year)
• Dr. Michael Sidel (two years)

Dr. Manon Bouchard
Clinical Movement Disorders Fellowship ($50,000)
Foothills Hospital, University of Calgary

Neurologist Dr. Manon Bouchard will spend her fellowship year working with Dr. Oksana Suchowersky at the Movement Disorders Clinic at the Foothills Hospital in Calgary and gaining expertise in treating Parkinson’s patients for sleep disorders. She will also learn how to select candidates for deep-brain stimulation (DBS) surgery and how to program and re-program the stimulator for DBS patients’ follow-up care. Once trained, Dr. Bouchard will return with her new expertise to Hôtel Dieu de Lévis Hospital in Quebec.

Dr. Amitabh Gupta
Clinical Research Fellowship ($50,000)
Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Centre
Toronto Western Hospital

Dr. Amitabh Gupta will train at the Morton and Gloria Shulman Movement Disorders Centre at Toronto Western Hospital, under the supervision of Dr. Anthony Lang. In addition to providing patient care, Dr. Gupta will focus on Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), a condition that is often misdiagnosed as Parkinson’s but has a worse prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Dr. Gupta’s research will seek to improve the diagnostic criteria of MSA, as well as investigate aspects of sleep-related problems and cognitive deficits, in an effort to enhance disease understanding, patient care and therapeutic options.

Dr. Michael Sidel
Clinical Research Fellowship ($100,000)
Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research
Sir Mortimer B. Davis, Jewish General Hospital

Dr. Michael Sidel will spend his two-year clinical research fellowship training under the supervision of three neurologists: Dr. Calvin Melmed and Dr. Alexander Thiel at the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research at Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital, and Dr. Anne-Louise Lafontaine, director of the Movement Disorders Clinic at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Chair of PSC’s Research Policy Committee. Using a new technique, called transcranial magnetic stimulation, Dr. Sidel will try to determine which brain pathways are involved when people with Parkinson’s experience dyskinesia, the uncontrollable movements that are often a side-effect of Parkinson’s drug treatments. Finding these pathways will enable researchers to develop drugs or new surgical interventions to prevent or treat dyskinesia. Dr. Sidel will also diagnose and treat patients during his fellowship.