Donna Ferriero

Dr. Donna Ferriero is a pediatric neurologist who specializes in caring for newborns with neurological problems, including epilepsy, neuromuscular diseases, stroke and neurodevelopmental disorders.

Ferriero is director of the UCSF Neonatal Brain Disorders Laboratory, whose work has been crucial to researchers' understanding of how injury to certain groups of neural cells affects the developing nervous system. She has served as chair of the UCSF Department of Pediatrics as well as physician-in-chief of the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland.

Ferriero earned her medical degree at UCSF and then completed a residency in pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital. She returned to UCSF for a fellowship in child neurology. In 1987, she joined the UCSF faculty.

Ferriero is past president of the Child Neurology Society and American Pediatric Society. In 2000, she received the American Academy of Neurology's Sidney Carter Award in Child Neurology. She received UCSF's Royer Award for Excellence in Academic Neurology in 2007 and the American Stroke Association's Thomas Willis Lecture Award for outstanding contributions to stroke research in 2010. She was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2005, Association of American Physicians in 2011 and American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013. She has also received UCSF's Chancellor Award for Advancement of Women and the Society for Pediatric Research's Maureen Andrew Mentor Award.