Message from Dr.K.J. Oommen, Vice Chair, AKMG CME, NEW JERSEY CONVENTION, AUGUST 2026

#AKMG CME : Message from Dr. Oommen: Hello, Everyone, I am KJ Oommen, MD, (FAAN, FAES, FACNS) Vice Chair, AKMG CME. I was born and raised in Kuttanadu, once famed as the rice bowl of Kerala. I completed my medical education in Thiruvananthapuram Medical college, after which I came to the US and did an internship in medicine followed by residencies in neurology and psychiatry at the Arizona Health Sciences Center in Tucson, Arizona and a fellowship in electroencephalography, epilepsy, and evoked potentials at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Georgia.

After I completed my training, and working for a year as an Asst. Professor of Neurology in the Department of Neurology of the Medical College of Georgia, I was invited by the Department of Neurology of the University of Arizona where I founded and established the first Comprehensive Program for Epilepsy and directed it for 10 years. I was then invited to establish an epilepsy center in the Department of Neurology of the University of Oklahoma where I developed the existing Epilepsy program into a regional Center of Excellence in Epilepsy and directed it for 14 years. Subsequently I was invited to accept the position of the “Crofoot Chair of Epilepsy” created because of a benevolent gift from a family in Lubbock. After 2 years, I moved to the Covenant medical center, a private non-profit hospital in Lubbock.

During this period spanning a half century, I trained hundreds of medical students, dozens of residents, and six specialists (fellows) in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy. In the same period, I served as principal investigator for over 60 industry sponsored epilepsy drug research projects, leading to the US Federal Drug Administration (FDA) approval and or new indications for a dozen new antiepileptic drugs and the Deep Brain Stimulator (DBS), an electronic device for the treatment of epilepsy and authored over 100 research abstracts and 40 peer reviewed articles. I was also active in continuing education and organized dozens of Neurology and Epilepsy grand rounds and two dozen Regional Conferences in Neuroscience in the three states I worked in. I am married to the love of my life Susheela Oommen, and am blessed with two children and three grandchildren, currently in their mid-to-high teens. I have been a life member of AKMG since its early days and am happy to join all of you in the new role of Vice Chair of AKMG’s continuing medical education efforts upon the request of our president Dr. Elizabeth Mammen.