Michael Wilson, MD

Dr. Wilson’s focuses on demyelinating diseases like multiple sclerosis as well as the neurologic complications caused by a wide array of infections including HIV, cysticercosis, fungal infections and viral causes of encephalitis.

He does research in the UCSF Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the laboratory of Joseph L. DeRisi where he is supported by a clinical research training fellowship from the American Academy of Neurology. Wilson is utilizing the DeRisi Lab’s microarray and deep sequencing technologies to identify new infectious and autoimmune causes of encephalitis as well as working to better understand how encephalitis-causing viruses enter and damage the central nervous system.

Wilson graduated with honors from the University of Chicago and earned his medical degree from UCSF where he was awarded the Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Medical Student Research and the Gold-Headed Cane Award, the top honor for a graduating medical student. He completed his neurology residency at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital and then did a clinical and research fellowship in neuro-infectious diseases at MGH and the laboratory of Prof. W. Paul Duprex at Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. He is board certified in neurology.