Tristan Sands, MD, PhD is an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) in the Division of Child Neurology and the Institute for Genomic Medicine (IGM).

Dr. Sands completed his child neurology residency at the University of California, San Francisco under the mentorship of Dr. Roberta Cilio and epilepsy and clinical neurophysiology fellowships at Columbia University Irving Medical Center under the tutelage of Dr. Cigdem Akman and Dr. James Riviello.

Dr. Sands is a pediatric and neonatal neurologist and epileptologist with clinical and research focus on seizures, epilepsies and developmental and epileptic encephalopathies resulting from genetic causes. His work has described how de novo KCNQ3 variants are responsible for a novel form of neurodevelopmental disability. His research into treatments for genetic epilepsies has demonstrated that benign neonatal seizures caused by mutation of the KCNQ2 and KCNQ3 genes show a universal response to carbamazepine and that early use of carbamazepine reduces the length of hospital admission for these newborns.

Dr. Sands will be evaluating epilepsy patients with putative genetic etiologies in a new Translational Medicine Clinic for the Genetic Epilepsies and conducting research on precision medicine for the genetic epilepsies with the IGM.

Boards and other certifications:

ABPN – Epilepsy, Clinical Neurophysiology & Neurology with Special Qualification in Child Neurology

Additional clinical expertise:

Genetic causes of epilepsy, including but not limited to, variants in KCNQ3, KCNQ2, NBEA, CSNK2B, GNB1, SCN1A, SCN2A, SCN8A, KCNT1, STXBP1, CHD2, SYNGAP1, CDKL5, PCDH19, KCNH1, DEPDC5, PIGA, PIGW, GNAO1, UBE3A, DYRK1A, PRRT2, ARX, DNM1, TSC1, TSC2, KANSL1, GRIN2A, ZEB2, MECP2, MEF2C, SMC1A, etc.