Dr. Isom is the Maurice H. Seevers Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmacology, Professor of Molecular and Integrative Physiology, and Professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan Medical School. She has served as Director of the Program in Biomedical Sciences and Assistant Dean for Graduate Education in the University of Michigan Medical School. She received her PhD in Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and then trained as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. William A. Catterall at the University of Washington. Dr. Isom’s research program at the University of Michigan focuses on voltage-gated sodium channel function and the roles of sodium channel gene variants in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy (DEE), including Dravet syndrome.  Her lab investigates SCN1A, SCN1B, and SCN8A DEE variants in mouse models and in human induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) neurons and cardiac myocytes. Dr. Isom showed, in collaboration with Dr. Jack Parent, that the high risk of SUDEP in Dravet syndrome may result from a predisposition to cardiac arrhythmias in addition to neuronal hyperexcitability, reflecting haploinsufficiency of SCN1A in heart and brain and the resulting compensatory overexpression of other sodium channel genes in those tissues. Their work predicted cardiac abnormalities in a Dravet syndrome patient prior to clinical evaluation. Most recently, she has collaborated with Stoke Therapeutics to develop the first antisense oligonucleotide precision therapeutic agent for Dravet syndrome, which is now in clinical trials. Dr. Isom is Co-PI of the NINDS-funded EpiMVP Center Without Walls.  In addition to her research activities, Dr. Isom serves as PI of the NIH funded, Pharmacological Sciences Training Program T32 grant, co-chairs the Dravet Syndrome Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, served on the Board of the American Epilepsy Society, chaired the NIH ESTA study section, as well as served on editorial boards of scientific journals. She has received awards for research and mentoring, including her current NINDS Javits R37 MERIT award and the University of Michigan Rackham Distinguished Graduate Mentoring Award. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, and a Fellow of the American Epilepsy Society. Dr. Isom was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021 and received the American Epilepsy Society Basic Science Research Award in 2022.