Photo of Dr. Juliet Knowles, Assistant Professor of Neurology at Stanford University.
Bio-X Affiliated Faculty

Dr. Juliet Knowles is Assistant Professor in Neurology at Stanford. Dr. Knowles is a physician-scientist who provides clinical care for children with epilepsy and leads a lab team conducting basic, translational and clinical research on pediatric epilepsy. She completed her M.D. and Ph.D. in Neurosciences at Stanford University, followed by residency training in Pediatrics and Child Neurology at Stanford, where she also served as Chief Resident. Following clinical fellowship training in Pediatric Epilepsy, Dr. Knowles completed post-doctoral research related to myelin plasticity in epilepsy, under the mentorship of Drs. Michelle Monje and John Huguenard. Dr. Knowles is passionate about providing thorough, compassionate and innovative care for her patients, and her overarching goal is to use research as a tool to discover improved therapies for children with epilepsy. She is committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists and clinicians, from undergraduates interested in learning about lab research to medical students, residents and post-doctoral scholars. When she is not in the clinic or the lab, Dr. Knowles loves to spend time with her husband, Josh, and their two children. She also enjoys reading, training and running in marathons, and spending time in the great outdoors of California.

The Knowles lab conducts basic, translational and clinical research to study how seizures shape white matter, and how changes in white matter shape the course of epilepsy and its co-morbidities. They discovered that generalized (absence) seizures induce aberrant myelination that promotes seizure progression. Thus, maladaptive myelination may be a novel pathogenic mechanism in epilepsy and other neurological diseases. Using innovative imaging, electrophysiological, histological and molecular biology techniques, they are studying multiple questions.