News & Updates

From March 23–29, 2025, the Open Medical Institute (OMI) hosted the Neurosurgery (Brain) seminar in Salzburg, Austria, in collaboration with Weill Cornell Medicine...

Dr. Roberta Marongiu, assistant professor of genetics and neuroscience in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, was recently featured in an interview with the American Parkinson Disease Association (APDA) for her groundbreaking research on the role of biological sex and menopause in Parkinson’s disease (PD).

Weill Cornell Medicine is proud to announce that nine faculty members from the Department of Neurological Surgery have been named to the 2025...

Diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) is one of the most challenging pediatric brain tumors to treat due to its location in the brainstem and resistance to conventional therapies. However, a groundbreaking clinical trial led by Dr. Mark Souweidane...

Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University neurosurgeons have reached an incredible milestone, surpassing 400...

A new study led by Weill Cornell Medicine Department of Neurological Surgery’s Dr. Umberto Tosi and Dr. Amanda Sacks-Zimmerman, published in the prestigious journal Cancers this January, brings reassuring news for patients facing surgery for colloid...

New research published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Jared Knopman and colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine and the University at Buffalo shows that a combination of surgery and embolization to treat subdural hematomas reduces the risk of recurrence and the need for follow-up surgeries. Chronic subdural hematomas are pools of blood that accumulate between the brain and its...

Weill Cornell Medicine neurosurgery resident Natasha Kharas, MD, PhD, and colleagues at Rice University, Houston Methodist, and Stanford School of Medicine have published new research that identifies the neural mechanisms behind the boost in post-nap cognitive performance. The research team measured activity in three brain areas associated with task performance, recording...

Umberto Tosi, MD, a PGY-5 resident at Weill Cornell Medicine, was awarded second place for his research presentation at the New York Society of Neurosurgery's annual Resident Research Night last week. Dr. Tosi’s presentation, “A Novel Therapeutic Monoclonal Antibody for Inhibition of NOTCH Signaling to Prolong Survival in High-Grade Glioma Models,” reported on work he is conducting in the laboratory of Dr. Viviane Tabar, chair of neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr....

Nalini Tata, MD, MPP, a fourth-year resident in neurological surgery, has been selected as a member of the 2024-2025 class of White House Fellows. This highly competitive, non-partisan program brings together accomplished young professionals from business, government, academia, non-profits, medicine, and the armed forces to work with top-ranking Administration officials in preparation for...

Speaking to a rapt audience at the annual CNS meeting in Houston on Sunday, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk delivered the annual Michael L.J. Apuzzo Lecture on Creativity and Innovation on the subject of neurorestoration. Through his company Neuralink, Musk is pushing the boundaries on functional restoration through machine-brain interfaces — innovations that have their roots in ideas introduced by Dr. Apuzzo more than 30 years ago.

“This annual lecture pays homage to ‘...

Congratulations to third-year medical student Andrew Yang, whose research has been awarded a 2024 grant from the Council of State Neurosurgical Societies (CSNS)/CNS Foundation. The CSNS Medical Student Fellowship in Socioeconomic Research is awarded to a medical student conducting research on a socioeconomic issue impacting neurosurgical practice. Andrew is conducting research into disparities in industry funding for neurosurgeons; he will present his findings at the CSNS spring annual...

Dr. H. Allison Bender has been promoted to Professor of Neuropsychology in Neurological Surgery and Attending Psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Dr. Bender, who is Director of Neuropsychology within Neurological Surgery, is board certified by the American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Neuropsychology; she specializes in evaluating neurosurgical patients to determine if they are candidates for surgery, conducting...

Dr. Umberto Tosi, who has completed his fourth year of neurosurgical residency at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the 2024 Michael L. J. Apuzzo Resident Literature Award for Creativity and Innovation. The Apuzzo Award,...

Ibrahim Hussain, MD, has been appointed as the newest Leonard and Fleur Harlan Clinical Scholar, a three-year award that will help fund his work on biologic disc replacement and stem-cell based therapies for disc regeneration and repair. Dr. Hussain is an assistant professor of neurosurgery with advanced fellowship training in endoscopic, minimally invasive, and complex reconstructive spine surgery as well as a...

At today’s commencement ceremony for the graduating class of Weill Cornell Medical College, Dr. Mark Souweidane was announced as the winner of the 2024 Dean's Award for Excellence in Mentorship. This prize recognizes a faculty member who demonstrates an outstanding commitment to supporting colleagues to become academic leaders in clinical care, research, or education....

Dr. Thomas Imahiyerobo, who co-directs the Craniosynostosis Program at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine with Dr. Caitlin Hoffman, recently recorded an episode of the PRS Global Open Keynotes podcast, in which he discusses the value of virtual surgical planning (VSP) in many...

Dr. Lynn McGrath is one of the pioneers of endoscopic spine surgery in the United States, committed to bringing this minimally invasive approach to neurosurgery to as many patients as possible. Last month he introduced spinal endoscopy in Tanzania, training local surgeons on the techniques and performing two surgeries – the first-ever endoscopic spine procedures performed in Tanzania, and believed to be the...

Today is Match Day 2024, and the entire department is delighted to welcome the two outstanding candidates who matched into our program. Dr. Philip Stieg, Dr. Michael Kaplitt, and Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield announced today that Lily McLaughlin of Georgetown University School of Medicine and David Sykes of Duke University School of Medicine will begin the seven-year residency program with us this summer.

“As we do every year, we interviewed dozens of extraordinary...

Jared Knopman, MD, Director of Cerebrovascular Surgery and Interventional Neuroradiology, last week presented results of the EMBOLISE trial at the International Stroke Conference (ISC) 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona.  Dr. Knopman has been pioneering the use of endovascular treatment of subdural hematomas for nearly a decade, and he was the national Co-PI for the EMBOLISE trial. His ISC presentation...

The pediatric neurosurgery team of Weill Cornell had an impressive showing last week at the 2023 meeting of the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Pediatric Neurological Surgery. The annual meeting of the joint section is the largest meeting in the United States focused on pediatric neurosurgery and is attended by more than 500 professionals from around the world. This year’s meeting, held in Oklahoma City, included two presentations and a poster from the craniofacial program of our pediatric...

The 30-year-old initiative known as the Open Medical Institute (OMI) recently held its annual neurosurgery courses in Salzburg, Austria, led and instructed by many top names from the Weill Cornell Medicine neurological and orthopedic surgery faculty. The courses consisted of two weeklong seminars, the first focused on the brain and the second on the spine, instructing dozens of international fellows in advanced diagnostics and treatments.

Dr. Alexandra Giantini Larsen, a fifth-year resident in neurosurgery, was recently awarded first place at the New York Society of Neurosurgery Resident Research Night for her work on liquid biopsies for brainstem gliomas. Dr. Larsen placed first of the eight presentations by neurosurgical residents from New York area training programs. Her research, a collaborative project with Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK), found that liquid biopsies performed on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) are useful for...

Rafael Uribe, MD, MHS, has been awarded the 2023 Christopher Gaposchkin ’99 Research Prize in Neurological Surgery. Dr. Uribe, who is completing his fifth year of the neurosurgery residency program, was honored for “Influence of low-intensity focused ultrasound on locoregional drug delivery to the brain,” which he will present at the Society for Neuro-Oncology annual meeting in June. He is...

The online AO Surgery Reference from the AO Spine Foundation has been expanded to include a new Degeneration module written by Dr. Roger Härtl and Dr. Ibrahim Hussain of Och Spine at NewYork-Presbyterian at the Weill Cornell Medicine Center for Comprehensive Spine Care. The new module has been added to earlier modules on Trauma,...

The results of a five-year, multi-center clinical trial testing an innovative combination of an adenovirus and an immune checkpoint inhibitor against recurrent glioblastoma were published this week in Nature Medicine. The Phase 1/2 trial was conducted at multiple sites around the United States, including at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine, where Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna was the principal investigator. The trial, the first of its kind in humans, showed the...

Dr. Alexandra Giantini Larsen, who is completing her fourth year of neurosurgical residency at NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine, has been selected by the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) as the Neurosurgery Publications Deputy Resident Fellow for 2023-2024. Dr. Giantini Larsen will serve along with Dr. Ali M. Alawieh, selected as this year’s Resident Fellow. This is the first time the CNS has chosen two residents to serve as Resident Fellows.

...

Santiago R. Unda, MD, a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Michael Kaplitt’s Laboratory of Molecular Neurosurgery, was awarded the 2022 Ronald R. Tasker Young Investigator Award by the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS). The Tasker Award is given at the CNS meeting each year to the highest-ranked abstract submitted on pain research by a resident, fellow, or neurosurgeon two years in practice or less.

 The abstract, “Retrograde...

Alexandra Giantini Larsen, MD, a fourth-year resident in neurosurgery, has been awarded grants from the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) and NewYork-Presbyterian’s Health Justice in Action (HJA) Fund. Both grants are in support of Dr. Larsen’s efforts to increase diversity in neurosurgery by reaching out to high school students to encourage and motivate them toward careers in medicine.

...

We are pleased to announce two additional faculty promotions following on the news of Dr. Susan Pannullo's elevation to full professor earlier this month:

Jeffrey Greenfield, MD, PhD, has been promoted to Professor of Neurosurgery in Pediatrics. Dr. Greenfield specializes in...

It’s entirely appropriate on this National Women Physicians Day that we announce the promotion of Dr. Susan Pannullo to full professor.  With this appointment, Dr. Pannullo becomes the first woman to be named a professor of neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, and one of the few full professors of neurosurgery in the United States.

Dr. Pannullo, Director of Neurosurgical Radiosurgery and Neuro-oncology at the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center, is board-...

Rachael Han, a second-year medical student at Weill Cornell Medical College, was named winner of the Best Paper on Chiari award at the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Pediatric Neurological Surgery in December. The annual award, established in 2020, is given for the best paper on the topic of Chiari; it is funded by the Bobby Jones Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation and presented at the annual meeting of the joint section.

Rachael’s winning paper (“Fourth Ventricular...

When Newsweek magazine released its 2023 rankings of the very best hospitals worldwide, the neurosurgery service at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center at NewYork-Presbyterian was honored again. For the second year in a row, our world-class neurosurgery service was named the top program in New York, and the best east of the Mississippi. Our esteemed colleagues at the Mayo Clinic nudged us out of first place...

Seventh-year resident Evan Bander, MD, was named winner of the prestigious James Rutka Pediatric Brain Tumor Award by the AANS/CNS Section on Tumors for his abstract “A Positive Impact on Patterns of Relapse in Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma after Convection-Enhanced Delivery of Omburtamab.” The winning abstract, based on a study Dr. Bander conducted with Dr. Mark Souweidane, evaluates the outcomes of DIPG patients treated with convection-enhanced delivery (CED) in Dr. Souweidane’s...

Dr. Philip E. Stieg, the Margaret and Robert J. Hariri Professor of Neurological Surgery and Chairman of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and Neurosurgeon-in-Chief of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was named by Albany Medical College as the Distinguished Alumnus of the college for 2022. This marked the first time the college honored one its PhD graduates with that award. Dr. Stieg earned his PhD at AMC in 1980 before going on to earn his MD at the Medical...

Dr. Joseph Carnevale has been named winner of the 2022 Michael L. J. Apuzzo Resident Literature Award for Creativity and Innovation. Dr. Carnevale, who is completing his fifth year of the seven-year neurosurgery residency program, was presented with the award at the resident graduation ceremony held Thursday evening. The award was for “...

Dr. Roger Härtl and Dr. Rodrigo Navarro-Ramirez, along with a roster of world-class expert contributors, have published the ultimate resource for surgeons wishing to master minimally invasive techniques. The book, Essential Step-by-Step Techniques for Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery, was edited by Dr. Härtl and Dr. Rodrigo Navarro-Ramirez, a neurosurgeon from Mexico who has worked with Dr. Härtl since 2015.  Chapter authors include master spine surgeons from around the world who describe...

At the 2022 joint AANS/CNS Spine Summit, fifth-year neurosurgery resident Jacob Goldberg was named a 2022 Charlie Kuntz Scholar for work he’s done with Dr. Roger Härtl, Dr. Ibrahim Hussain, Dr. Carolin Melcher, and members of our resident training team. Dr. Goldberg also achieved top honors by winning the J.A.N.E. Award (Journalistic And Academic Neurosurgical Excellence) for top resident manuscript of the year.

The winning research project focused on the use of a high-...

A new multidisciplinary paper by researchers from Weill Cornell Medicine neurosurgery, radiation oncology, and radiology has been selected for the March 2022 cover of the journal Radiology: Imaging Cancer. The paper reports on significant findings that promise improved post-operative care for patients who have undergone brain surgery for a meningioma.

Meningiomas, which are the most common type of brain tumor, are typically treated with surgery. After...

The recent announcement that Dr. Michael Kaplitt has been awarded a three-year, $9 million grant to study Parkinson’s disease is the latest in a series of funding awards that are fueling innovation at Weill Cornell Medicine Neurological Surgery. Dr. Kaplitt’s grant, from the Aligning Sciences Across Parkinson’s (ASAP) initiative, will put him at the helm of an ambitious and innovative...

Newsweek magazine has released its 2022 rankings of hospitals worldwide in 10 specialties, and the neurosurgery service at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University Irving Medical Center at NewYork-Presbyterian was ranked #1. More than 40,000 medical experts were asked to choose the top hospitals in the world for 10 specialties, and the combined neurosurgery service at Weill Cornell Medicine and Columbia University emerged at the very top of the global list.

Thanks to a generous $3 million commitment from the Hansen-MacDonald family, the Executive Committee of the Board of Fellows of Weill Cornell Medicine has appointed Dr. Roger Härtl as the inaugural Hansen-MacDonald Professor of Neurological Surgery. The Hansen-MacDonald family established the endowed professorship to support Weill Cornell Medicine’s tripartite mission to care for patients, conduct research to advance the standard of care,...

On Saturday, June 12, 2021, the Weill Cornell Medicine Neurosurgery Department held a festive outdoor graduation celebration for Dr. Whitney Parker and Dr. Justin Schwarz, who have completed their seven-year training period in neurological surgery here. The graduation ceremony was especially celebratory this year after last year’s Zoom graduation, featuring the annual toasts and roasts to celebrate the freshly minted neurosurgeons.

“We are extremely pleased that our...

Dr. Philip E. Stieg, chairman, recently presented a Grand Rounds with the Seattle Science Foundation on AVMs, which is a topic on which he is an internationally renowned expert.  

After a months-long process of interviews and evaluations, the matches have been made: Nalini Tata and Natasha Kharas will join the neurosurgical residency program at Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian this summer. In an unusual year of firsts due to Covid, including virtual interviews, informational videos, and live remote interactions to provide a personal sense of our program, this year our announcement includes a more historic first: Both of our new residents are women...

Dr. Roger Härtl is currently seeking candidates for a research assistant position. Ideal candidates are undergraduates seeking to enhance their resume before application to graduate school or medical school, or recent college graduates interested in neurosurgical research. A research background is preferred.

This is a full-time, one- to two-year position at Weill Cornell Medical College, Neurological Surgery, reporting to Dr. Roger Härtl, chief of spinal surgery....

Roberta Marongiu, PhD, has been awarded a two-year, $275,000 NIH-NIA R21 grant and an additional $125,000 administrative supplement to the NIH-NIA R21 to study the effects of menopause on the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (amyloid β, neurofibrillary tangles, synaptic and neuronal loss, and chronic gliosis) are laid down starting 20 years before clinical symptoms appear, at about the time of perimenopause in women. Yet very little is...

Babacar Cisse, MD, PhD, has been awarded a Department of Defense grant to investigate how transcription factors regulate the development, function, and maintenance of microglia in glioma. The highly competitive Career Development Award is intended to support early-career cancer investigators as they conduct innovative studies under the mentorship of an experienced researcher. The three-year, $400,000 award will support Dr. Cisse’s novel work as he first investigates the normal...

Dr. Theodore Schwartz, Vice Chair for Clinical Research and David and Ursel Barnes Professor in Minimally Invasive Surgery, recently published a paper detailing the use of minimally invasive surgery (MIS) to treat olfactory groove meningiomas (OGMs). Dr. Schwartz and his co-authors determined that an eyebrow incision keyhole craniotomy with endoscopic assistance was a safe and effective alternative to open...

Dr, Kai-Ming Fu, Director of the Spinal Deformity and Scoliosis Program as well as Chief of Neurosurgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan, was elected as a new member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, a publication of the Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group. This prestigious position gives Dr. Fu the responsibility of reviewing articles for this preeminent journal in the field of spinal neurosurgery. 

The Journal of Neurosurgery...

The Department of Neurological Surgery is extremely proud that four of our Physician Assistants were nominated this year for campus-wide awards. Three (Allison Basham, Beth Higgins,  and Chloe Holland) were nominated as PA of the Year and a fourth, Emily Wolpiuk, was nominated as PA Rookie of the Year. Racking up four nominations out of 300 PAs on the Weill Cornell campus is a significant statement about the quality of our providers,...

Our neurosurgery fellow in Tanzania, Dr. Beverly Cheserem, was spotlighted during the #BlackInNeuroWeek social media campaign. The #BlackInNeuroWeek campaign takes place from Monday, July 27 to Sunday, August 2 and aims to create a space dedicated to spotlighting success and supporting black professionals in the neurosciences.

Dr. Cheserem’s journey to neurosurgery started when she was working as a junior doctor in London. She was fascinated by the spectrum neurosurgery operated in,...

Dr. Caitlin Hoffman, the diversity and inclusion champion in the department of neurological surgery, has been named a faculty winner of the Dean’s Diversity and Healthcare Disparity Research Awards for her work with the PrIMES mentorship program she co-founded in 2018. The $50,000 grant will allow the program to develop technology to automate data collection and analysis as well as expand to serve additional populations and meet additional needs.

PrIMES (Program for Individualized...

At the resident graduation ceremony held Friday evening, Dr. Ibrahim Hussain was named winner of the 2020 Michael L. J. Apuzzo Resident Literature Award for Creativity and Innovation. Dr. Hussain, who is completing an enfolded fellowship in spinal neurosurgery this month,  won the award for “Transforaminal Endoscopic Lumbar Discectomy and Foraminotomy with...

Dr. Kai-Ming Fu was featured on the popular resource website spine-health.com for contributing an article titled “Understanding the Causes of Tailbone Pain“

Please see below for an excerpt from the articke:

“Coccydynia, commonly called tailbone pain refers to persistent...

Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield and Dr. Theodore Schwartz have published a new textbook, Pediatric Endoscopic Endonasal Skull Base Surgery — the first textbook focused on the use of these complex procedures in children.

A new study by Dr. Theodore Schwartz, Dr. Gabriella Wernicke, and colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, shows that implanted cesium-131 seeds are more effective for local control of a metastatic brain tumor than stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS). The results, published online ahead of print in the Journal of Neurosurgery, validate the use of ...

Dr. Benjamin Hartley, a resident in neurological surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, has been awarded the 2020 Pioneers in Diversity Bruce Laine Ballard, M.D. Award. The award recognizes commitment to improving student life and to fostering a supportive environment where all students are able to thrive. Dr. Hartley was recognized for his work as co-founder of the Primes Mentorship Program as well as his ongoing efforts to develop and expand the program.

Primes (...

Two neurosurgical faculty members at Weill Cornell Medicine have published academic papers focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on neurosurgical and radiosurgical procedures in the midst of this public health crisis. 

Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna’s paper, titled “Inpatient and outpatient case prioritization for patients with neuro-oncologic disease...

The Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medicine have appointed Neurosurgeon-in-Chief Philip E. Stieg, PhD, MD, as the first Margaret and Robert J. Hariri, MD ’87, PhD ’87 Professor of Neurological Surgery. The endowed fellowship was made possible through a $3 million gift from Dr. Robert Hariri (MD ’87, PhD ’87) and his wife, Margaret. The endowment will support continued groundbreaking research in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine.

In announcing the...

To further our commitment to mentorship, Weill Cornell Medicine Neurological Surgery hosted a group of students from nearby Vanguard High School for a day of education and discovery. The 11th-grade students participated in tours, presentations, and demonstrations about the many different careers available in a wide range of occupations that are essential to the day-to-day operations of a hospital.

The students began their day with a tour of our Molecular Neurosurgery and Pediatric...

Demonstrating our commitment to mentorship at the earliest ages, the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center recently hosted dozens of potential health care providers for an exciting day of learning and fun. The fifth graders, all from St. Ignatius Loyola School in Manhattan, explored the fields of neurosurgery, laboratory medicine, trauma, hematology, and pathology, and even got a lesson in what to do about bleeding.

Three groups of 20 students each toured different areas of...

Whitney Parker, MD, PhD, a sixth-year resident in neurosurgery at Weill Cornell, was awarded the 2019 Kenneth Shulman Award from the Joint Section on Pediatric Neurosurgery of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS). This award, given each year at the annual meeting of the Joint Section, is given to the best paper presented by a resident-in-training. Dr. Parker's winning paper is "Generating Patient-Based Models of Neurodevelopmental Epileptic Disorders."

The Kenneth...

Fifth-year neurosurgical resident Whitney Parker MD, PhD, was awarded the 2019 Christopher Gaposchkin Research Prize in Neurological Surgery for her presentation at the annual Resident Research Day on June 13, 2019. Dr. Parker’s winning presentation was “Generating Patient-Based Models of Neurodevelopmental Disorders to Uncover Disease Mechanisms and Effective Treatments.” This represents a two-time achievement for Dr. Parker, who also won the prize in 2018 for research into NR2B, a...

The 2018 list of “Best Doctors in New York”, published this week by New York magazine, includes eight neurosurgeons from the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain & Spine Center. This annual list names the top primary doctors and specialists in the New York metropolitan area. These highly respected physicians are a small subset of the 6,000 names in Castle Connolly Medical’s list of "Top Doctors: New York Metro Area", published each April. This year’s “Best Doctors” issue of New York ...

At a ceremony in the Great Hall at Ellis Island on Saturday night, Dr. Philip E. Stieg, professor and chairman of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine and neurosurgeon-in-chief of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center, was awarded the prestigious Ellis Island Medal of Honor. The Medal of Honor, which is an award recognized by Congress, is given annually to exceptional individuals for outstanding contributions in their field.

The...