Dr. Ruth Ottman, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health was part of a 61-member international research team working to improve understanding of childhood epilepsy and other complex neurological disorders. Dr. Ottman was a principal investigator of two of the NIH grants that supported this work. The paper, published in Nature, reports the discovery of as many as 25 epilepsy-causing mutations in new and previously identified genes.