Dr. Melisa Carrasco is an Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She also co-directs the UW Neonatal Neurocritical Care and Rehabilitation program and oversees patients in the UW Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from Yale University in 2005, followed by a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Michigan in 2012, and a medical degree from the University of Rochester in 2014. Dr. Carrasco completed her Pediatric Neurology residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2019 and further specialized with fellowships in Neonatal Neurology and Pediatric Epilepsy (2019-2021).
Currently, Dr. Carrasco’s research aims to understand how children develop cognitive and executive function skills after experiencing perinatal brain injuries. Her lab at the University of Wisconsin is working to identify various biomarkers that can predict cognitive and executive function issues in infants at risk for cerebral palsy. Collaborating with teams at the University of North Carolina and the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Carrasco is also developing a new approach to cognitive rehabilitation for children with cerebral palsy, by means of the Hybrid A2 intervention.
Her significant contributions to science have been recognized with several awards, including the Society for Pediatric Research House Officer Award in 2019, a NINDS Research Education Program grant from 2018 to 2020, and a Thrasher Foundation Early Researcher Award from 2023-2025.
