Dr. Valcarce-Aspegren received his MD in 2023 from Yale School of Medicine, where he was awarded two consecutive yearlong research fellowships to conduct epilepsy research in the laboratory of Dr. Hal Blumenfeld. Receiving both the Richard K. Gershon, MD, Medical Student Research Fellowship and the James G. Hirsch, MD, Endowed Medical Student Research Award allowed Dr. Valcarce-Aspegren to spend two years using an awake mouse model of focal limbic seizures that he had helped develop. During the two years of research, Dr. Valcarce-Aspegren used this new animal model to perform the first awake electrophysiology recordings in the locus coeruleus during focal limbic seizures.
As a Yale medical student, Dr. Valcarce-Aspegren also participated in the HAVEN free clinic, serving an uninsured population and mentoring junior medical students. Dr. Valcarce-Aspegren received his bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he completed an honors thesis on Medieval Medicine on the Camino de Santiago.
