Juhn Wada
The award will be presented to Dr. Wada in June, at the 30th Internationl Congress of Epilepsy in Montreal.
Dr. Wada developed a test for cerebral hemispheric dominance of language function. Officially called the intracarotid sodium amobarbital procedure (ISAP), it’s more commonly known as the Wada test, bearing his name as the physician who first performed it. Most epilepsy patients considering surgery undergo the Wada test.
Dr. Wada created the first surgical epilepsy program and seizure investigation monitoring unit in British Columbia, at UBC Hospital. His main interest as a neurologist has been researching human brain asymmetry and the neurobiology of epilepsy.
Dr. Wada studied medicine at Hokkaido University, earning his M.D. in 1946 and becoming Doctor of Medical Science in 1951. He was an Assistant Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at Hookaido University, then worked at the University of Minnesota and the Montreal Neurological Institute before settling at UBC in 1956.
He was an associate of the Medical Research Council of Canada from 1966 to 1994, and was the founding president of Canadian League Against Epilepsy (CLAE) from 1977 to 1979, and president of the Americal Clinical Neurophysiology Society, the American Epilepsy Society in 1988, and the 10th Epilepsy Internaional Congress in 1978.
He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and the second highest order of Japan in 1995. In April 2012 he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.