This fund was established in 2012 by B. J. and Eve Wilder to support a professorship in epilepsy research in the University of Florida Department of Neurology.

B.J. joined the University of Florida faculty team in 1966 and was involved in the clinical development of all new drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat epileptic patients between 1975 and 1988. He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1951 and his medical degree MD in 1955, both from Duke University.

After serving 3 years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. and a year of surgical residency training at Coral Gables Veterans Affairs Hospital, B.J. entered private practice as a family physician in Fernandina Beach in 1959. In 1962, he did his neurological training at the University of Florida. In 1965, he received a post-doctoral fellowship award in neurophysiology and epilepsy at Stanford University. He then joined the UF faculty in 1966 and was subsequently awarded a clinical fellowship in epilepsy at the VA Hospital in Gainesville. He became chief of the neurology service until 1994 and is the founder and president of the Epilepsy Research Foundation of Florida, Inc.

Eve earned a bachelor’s degree from Duke University in 1952. In 2003, B.J. and Eve established the B. J. and Eve Wilder Center for Excellence in Epilepsy Research at UF’s McKnight Brain Institute.