An $86,000 check for the Bronte Epilepsy Research Program at UC Davis Medical Center will be presented on Wednesday, Jan. 9, at 5 p.m. at the Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center, room 3015B.

The check represents proceeds from the Second Annual Bronte Epilepsy Research Golf Classic and will be presented by Mary Lou and Chris Sordi, the grandparents of the girl for whom the golf tournament is named. Their granddaughter has Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, a severe and incurable form of childhood epilepsy, and is treated at UC Davis Medical Center.

The proceeds from the annual tournament support the Bronte Epilepsy Research Program and the annual Bronte Lecture, the latter of which will be delivered following the check presentation.

The lecture will be delivered by W. Donald Shields, one of the world's foremost experts on pediatric epilepsy. Shields' lecture is titled "Epilepsy Surgery in Young Children: Concepts and Outcomes."

Shields is a professor in the Division of Pediatric Neurology at UCLA and director of the Pediatric Epilepsy Program and the Clinical Antiepileptic Drug Research program, which offers comprehensive diagnostic evaluation and treatment of infants and children with uncontrolled seizures.

Shields has been a forceful advocate for the early use of surgery to treat some childhood epilepsy syndromes and has established UCLA as a major tertiary pediatric epilepsy treatment and research center. He has published many influential journal articles and book chapters and is currently principal investigator on several studies to evaluate new pharmaceutical therapies for pediatric epilepsy.