James O. McNamara

McNamara has served professional and voluntary health organizations throughout his career including the Society for Neuroscience, the American Neurological Association, and the Epilepsy Foundation. He served as president of the American Epilepsy Society in 1994. He served on the neuroscience advisory panel of the Klingenstein Foundation from 1995 through 2020 and on the advisory board of the CURE Foundation from 2014 through 2017.

McNamara was named recipient of a Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award from the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke in 1987 and of a second such award in 1994. He received a Freedom to Discover Award from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation in 2001. He was elected to the American Academy of Physicians in 1997 and the National Academy of Medicine in 2005

Following postdoctoral research training, he joined the faculty as an assistant professor in the Department of Medicine (Neurology) at Duke and served as director of the epilepsy center at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center from 1976-1986. In 1982 he founded the Duke Center for the Advanced Study of Epilepsy. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1980 and full Professor in 1985. He was named Duke School of Medicine Professor of Neuroscience in the Departments of Medicine (Neurology), Neurobiology, and Pharmacology in 1993. In 2002 he was named Chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke University. He stepped down from the Chair in 2011 and continues his research and teaching at Duke

McNamara was born in Portage, Wisconsin and raised in Milwaukee. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Marquette University in 1964 and a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Michigan in 1968. He completed a medical internship and two years of Neurology residency at the University of Michigan in 1971. He served as a neurologist in the United States Army at Fort Hood, Texas from 1971-1973. After serving as Chief Resident of Neurology at Duke University in 1973, he conducted postdoctoral research training centered on myelin biochemistry with Stan Appel from 1974-1976. He completed a sabbatical studying molecular neurobiology in the laboratory of Stephen Heinemann at the Salk Institute from 1991 to 1992

James O. McNamara (born September 25, 1942) is an American neurologist and neuroscientist, known for his research of epileptogenesis, the process underlying development and progression of epilepsy. He is the Duke School of Medicine Professor of Neuroscience in the Departments of Neurobiology, Neurology, and Pharmacology and Cancer Biology at Duke University. He served as chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke from 2002-2011