Dr. Charles E. Niesen was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. He received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his medical degree from the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University in Israel. He completed his pediatric training at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and his child neurology fellowship at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Canada.  He spent two years doing post-graduate research in Neurophysiology at the University of Toronto.

His first faculty position was with Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California. As an assistant professorship of pediatrics and neurology, he set up an NIH-sponsored Electrophysiology lab to study epilepsy in the developing brain. After five years, he moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where he was associate professor of pediatrics and director of the Division of Child Neurology. He is board certified in child neurology from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and the Medical Research Council of Canada.

He is a specialist in childhood epilepsy and neuro-developmental disorders of the brain and has published over twenty peer-reviewed articles on epilepsy and drug effects in the developing brain. He is a member of the American Epilepsy Society, Child Neurology Society, American Academy of Neurology  and Society for Neuroscience.  He is co-founder of the Pasadena Neurodevelopment Group. He resides in Pasadena with his wife and two daughters.