Mohamad Zakaria Koubeissi, MD, MA, FAAN, FANA, FAES, is Professor and Interim Chair of Neurology, and Director of the Epilepsy Center at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington, DC. Dr. Koubeissi earned his BS with Distinction in Mathematics (1995) and his MD (1999) from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon. In 2020, he also earned a master’s degree in English literature from GWU. 

After graduating from medical school, he spent a year as a postdoctoral research fellow at AUB before pursuing clinical training in Medicine and Neurology at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, NY (2000-2002). He completed his Neurology residency at New York University in New York, NY (2004), and his fellowship in Epilepsy and Clinical Neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD (2004-2006). 

Dr. Koubeissi was on faculty at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH for 6 years before joining GWU in 2012. At both Case Western and GWU, he established epilepsy centers that gained significant academic visibility and received international referrals. 

Throughout and after his training, Dr. Koubeissi initiated new research projects in epilepsy. He has lectured on the medical and surgical treatment of intractable epilepsy across the U.S., Latin America, Europe, and Asia. With 115 papers published and four edited books on epilepsy, his work has garnered 3,725 citations with an h-index of 26 and i10-index of 63. 

Dr. Koubeissi directs the annual Epilepsy Board Review Course and the world-renowned, live-streaming monthly Epilepsy Grand Rounds at GWU. He serves as a reviewer for several major journals. Among his awards, he is a Fellow of the AAN, ANA, and AES, and has received numerous other honors, including the 2012 Innovation Award from the School of Engineering at Case Western. He has been elected as the vice chair of the epilepsy section at the AAN, and the chair of the Scientific Committee of the AES. He is also a member of the Golden Key International Honor Society. Dr. Koubeissi’s research on consciousness and epilepsy was featured in a National Geographic documentary aired in November 2015 worldwide in more than 50 languages.