Heather Fullerton, MD, MAS

Dr. Heather Fullerton is a pediatric vascular neurologist with an active clinical research program in childhood stroke. She is Chief of the UCSF Division of Child Neurology and Medical Director of the Pediatric Brain Center at Benioff Children’s Hospital. She is the former director of the UCSF Pediatric Stroke and Cerebrovascular Disease Center, which she established in 2006. After graduating from Baylor College of Medicine in 1996, Dr. Fullerton came to UCSF for her pediatrics residency and child neurology fellowship, and then joined the Child Neurology faculty in July 2002. She completed a vascular neurology fellowship in 2003, and a two-year Masters in Clinical Research in 2005. Since then, she has led a robust research program in childhood stroke with continuous grant funding from the NIH, American Heart Association, and Thrasher Research Foundation. Since 2009, she has been the principal investigator of the NIH-funded prospective international study, “The Vascular effects of Infection in Pediatric Stroke” (VIPS). The original VIPS study, completed in 2016, enrolled more than 700 children at 37 hospitals worldwide and established that common childhood infections, particularly herpesviruses, can trigger arterial ischemic stroke. The continuation of this study, VIPS II, will examine specific pathogens and the host immune response in children with stroke. Her long-term goal is to develop clinical trials for primary and secondary stroke prevention in children.