Leonardo Bonilha

Leonardo Bonilha, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician-scientist who serves as Senior Associate Dean for Research at the University of South Carolina Floyd School of Medicine, and Associate Vice-President for Health Sciences Research at the University of South Carolina. Bonilha has more than two decades of experience, having built his career at the intersection of clinical care, neuroscience research, and community outreach. Bonilha earned both his M.D. and Ph.D. in neuroscience at the State University of Campinas (Brazil), completed post-doctoral work in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Nottingham (UK), and underwent neurology residency and clinical neurophysiology fellowship at the Medical University of South Carolina.

Bonilha's research has focused on computational neuroscience, especially how brain networks adapt after neurological injury. In particular, his research interests are in the mechanisms of language impairments following stroke and in epilepsy treatment outcomes.

Early life and education Bonilha was born and raised in Brazil. He earned his Doctor of Medicine at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in 1999, followed by Neurology Board Certification by the Brazilian Academy of Neurology in 2003. He completed his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at UNICAMP in 2004, where his doctoral work focused on quantitative morphometrical analyses and automated voxel-based morphometry of limbic abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy.

Bonilha rejoined the University of South Carolina Floyd School of Medicine in 2023, following a national search, to serve as Senior Associate Dean for Research. In this role, he also became Director of the newly formed USC Brain Health Network, a statewide initiative aimed at expanding access to neurological and cognitive-health care, particularly in rural communities. Since assuming the position, he has led efforts to strengthen the school's research infrastructure and helped guide development of the USC Brain Health Center, which will include advanced neuroimaging resources such as South Carolina's first 7-Tesla MRI. He continues to maintain clinical practice at the Prisma Health Neurology Group, while advancing research programs in brain health, language recovery after stroke, epilepsy, and neurodegenerative disorders.

Research contributions Bonilha's research centers on understanding how large-scale brain networks support language, cognition, and epilepsy, with a particular emphasis on structural neuroimaging and computational modeling. Bonilha pioneered work on diffusion MRI, diffusion tractography, and connectome lesion-symptom mapping, demonstrating that residual structural connectivity predicts treatment response, language outcomes, and long-term recovery trajectories in individuals with post-stroke aphasia. Bonilha has also been actively engaged with the Center for Aphasia Recovery (C-STAR at USC, led by Julius Fridriksson). With C-STAR, Bonilha has participated in and led several NIH-funded clinical trials on aphasia recovery. More recently, Bonilha has pioneered the identification of the importance of small vessel disease, premature brain aging, and neuroplasticity among stroke survivors with aphasia.

In epilepsy, Bonilha pioneered the investigation of limbic abnormalities in temporal lobe epilepsy. He was one of the first investigators to demonstrate morphometric abnormalities in entorhinal, perirhinal, thalamus, and extra-temporal limbic regions among patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Subsequently, he pioneered the use of connectome-based biomarkers to classify temporal lobe epilepsy and predict surgical outcomes, helping define network-level mechanisms underlying pharmacoresistance and seizure propagation. His research further introduced reproducible methods for mapping the human structural connectome and applying deep learning to epilepsy imaging data. More recently, he pioneered the work on AI-aided diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy MRI markers using convolutional neural networks.

Across both domains, his work integrates advanced MRI analytics, machine learning and AI, and network computational neuroscience to clarify the mechanisms through which brain architecture supports neurological function and guides personalized treatment strategies. and received the Dorothea Krebs Neurology Professorship Endowment that same year.

Personal life Bonilha lives in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with his wife Heather, and their two children. Heather Bonilha is a professor at the University of South Carolina, where she serves as the Doctoral Program Graduate Director in the department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.