Today, the Child Neurology Society announced its 2026 award winners. Leading off with the Philip R. Dodge Young Investigator Award is Dr. Danielle Guez Barber. This is one of the highest honors a young physician-scientist in child neurology can receive -- and there is no one more deserving who has dedicated their life to Hope for HIE.
A HIE Parent, Child Neurologist, and Basic Scientist
Dr. Barber's path to this work started long before she joined our Medical Advisory Board. During medical school, her own baby was delivered prematurely and experienced HIE, reshaping the course of her career in child neurology.
That personal history is part of what makes her impact on our community so distinct. Dr. Barber joined our Medical Advisory Board in 2020 and our Board of Directors in 2023, and in that time she has changed how Hope for HIE thinks about research — not as something that happens to our families, but as something families help lead.
Dr. Barber is a neonatal neurologist at Children's Hospital Colorado and the University of Colorado Denver, where she cares for babies with HIE in the NICU and follows them beyond discharge. Alongside her clinical work, she runs a basic science research program studying how the brain's immune response after hypoxic-ischemic injury differs between males and females, using the Vannucci mouse model. Her findings are helping identify why outcomes after HIE can differ by sex — work that could eventually lead to more targeted, individualized treatments.
Dr. Barber serves as Principal Investigator of the HIE Registry, a multi-year effort she has driven from concept to national infrastructure. The registry links standardized clinical data from HIE care with caregiver-reported outcomes — giving researchers, for the first time, a structured way to follow children with HIE over the long term using the measures that matter most to the families living it.
She has forged the registry's core partnerships, including with the Cerebral Palsy Research Network and the Newborn Brain Society, and has guided its expansion from an initial pilot to a growing, multi-site infrastructure. Most recently, the registry received a major grant from the Pediatric Epilepsy Research Foundation (PERF) to expand its reach — bringing in new clinical sites and deepening the connection between neurodevelopmental and family-reported outcomes.
The Legacy of the Dodge Award
The Philip R. Dodge Young Investigator Award is given each year by the Child Neurology Society to recognize basic science or clinical research by accomplished early-stage investigators who are members of the Society. It's named for Dr. Philip R. Dodge, a founding figure in pediatric neurology known for mentoring generations of young physician-scientists, and the award was established in his honor in 2004.
It's a competitive honor: candidates must already be active or junior CNS members with an established research record, and the award recognizes an outstanding physician-scientist whose work exemplifies scientific rigor and a deep commitment to advancing the field of child neurology. Recipients are invited to deliver a featured lecture at the Child Neurology Society's next Annual Meeting — a stage that puts their work in front of the entire field.
Hope for HIE's Medical Advisory Board now counts three Dodge Award winners among its members. Dr. Bhooma Aravamuthan of Washington University in St. Louis won the award in 2022 for her research on dystonia following neonatal brain injury, and Dr. Monica Lemmon of Duke University won in 2021 for her work on decision-making for critically ill children and stakeholder engagement in research — work that has directly shaped improving family-centered outcomes. Both serve on our Medical Advisory Board alongside Dr. Barber.
In addition, Dr. Ana Cristancho, the 2025 award winner based out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is also a prolific researcher in HIE driving forward research into potential therapies. It's a reflection of the caliber of researchers who choose to spend their time with our community.
Full-Circle: Moving Forward the Field of HIE Research
What makes Dr. Barber's award especially meaningful is the arc it recognizes: a throughline from her bench science on the brain's immune response after hypoxia-ischemia, to the clinical research she leads in the NICU and beyond, to the registry now connecting sites and families nationwide, to advocacy work that puts caregivers at the table from day one.
"Dr. Barber joined our Medical Advisory Board in 2020 and our Board of Directors in 2023. In that time, she has fundamentally transformed how Hope for HIE engages with research. Before Dr. Barber, our research engagement was reactive — we responded to investigator-initiated requests, supplied family voices when asked, and provided dissemination support after studies concluded. Under her leadership and partnership, we have moved to a proactive model in which our community helps set the research agenda, codesigns the outcomes that matter, and contributes data through a structured infrastructure built specifically to integrate caregiver-reported and clinical-site information. This is not a marginal change. It is the kind of transformation our community has needed for decades," stated Betsy Pilon, Executive Director, Hope for HIE.
Beyond the recognition of Dr. Barber's exceptional work, it's an example of what happens when you show up for your community and what can be done when motivated people come together to change the status quo. Hard work and heart work are changing the HIE community for the better. It's amazing to see the Child Neurology Society recognize and celebrate someone who bridges advocacy and research, and inspires the next generation of researchers to heed that call for the HIE community.
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