News & Updates

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.

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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.

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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)...

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...

An April 2020 supplement to Global Spine Journal (GSJ), edited by Dr. Roger Härtl, spotlights “The 6 T’s of Minimally Invasive Spinal Surgery.” Written and edited by leading experts in minimally invasive spine surgery, the supplement explores the defining principles of MISS: Target, Technology, Techniques, Training, Testing, and Talent. As an internationally renowned expert in MISS, Dr. Härtl served as the invited editor of the supplement.

“It has been an honor for me to be...

Dr. Rohan Ramakrishna, Director of the Brain Metastases program at Weill Cornell Medicine, along with Dr. Rajiv Magge, Dr. Ali Baaj, and Dr. Jonathan Knisely have published a new textbook titled Central Nervous System Metastases, which provides a contemporary resource for the medical and surgical management of brain and spine metastases. This text represents an international collaboration of experts aimed...

In a new paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of doctors and researchers including Dr. Michael Kaplitt describe the first-ever implantation of a patient’s own progenitor cells into the putamen region of the brain. The patient, who suffered from idiopathic Parkinson’s disease, was treated on both left and right sides of his brain, six months apart. At 18 month and 24 months post-treatment, he shows improvement or stabilization of his symptoms; since the...

Blue Cross Blue Shield Association has designated NewYork-Presbyterian as a "Blue Distinction Center" for Spine Surgery — the only New York City hospital selected for that designation. To be named a Blue Distinction Center, a facility must deliver high-quality, safe spine surgery, performed by skilled surgeons, and producing better outcomes.

“We are proud to carry this designation,” says Dr. Roger Härtl, chief of spine surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medicine...

Dr. Michael Kaplitt of Weill Cornell Medicine, Dr. Ali Rezai of West Virginia University, and a team of researchers from the United States and Israel have released a new study that validates the use of focused ultrasound to treat patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The paper, “Noninvasive Hippocampal Blood-Brain Barrier Opening in...

Neurosurgeon Louis Chang, MD, has been appointed to the faculty of the Weill Cornell Medical College Department of Neurological Surgery. Dr. Chang, a board-certified neurosurgeon with fellowship training in minimally invasive spine surgery and navigation, was previously the Chief of Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery at Medstar Franklin Square Medical Center in Baltimore , Adjunct Assistant Professor in Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Maryland Medical Center, and Clinical...

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...

A case from Dr. Ali Baaj and spine fellow Dr. Ibrahim Hussain was recently featured in the Spine Universe Case Study library. The online library places spine cases from around the country in front of fellow spine surgeons for discussion and review.

The featured case focused on a 30-...

Dr. Michael L.J. Apuzzo was recently invited to spend a week as a visiting professor at the University of Toronto, where he presented a variety of seminars and lectures, led a Town Hall meeting with residents and fellows, and delivered the annual Alan and Susan Hudson Lecture. Dr. Alan Hudson is widely credited with having transformed the delivery of health care in Canada; the prominent neurosurgeon spent a decade as president and CEO of the University Health Network in Toronto — a...

Dr. Ali A. Baaj recently released a new book titled Revision Spine Surgery: Pearls and Pitfalls. Co-authored with Dr. Gregory D. Schroeder and Dr. Alexander R. Vaccaro from the world-renowned Rothman Orthopedic Institute,...

Dr. Ali A. Baaj, Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery and Co-Director of the Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center’s Spinal Deformity and Scoliosis Program, has accepted an invitation to serve on the education committee of the Scoliosis Research Society (SRS) for the 2019-2020 term. The SRS, considered one of the top international spinal deformity organizations, has traditionally...

Dr. Kai-Ming Fu, Associate Professor of Neurological Surgery in Spinal Surgery and Co-Director of the Spinal Deformity and Scoliosis Program, has been appointed to the Board of Directors at the NeuroPoint Alliance (NPA) and has been named chair of the organization’s Ad Hoc Committee for the 2019-2020 year. In this role, Dr. Fu will lead the efforts of the committee to improve patient care through the development and evaluation of outcomes data.

The NPA...

Fifth-year neurosurgical resident Thomas Link, M.D., has been named the winner of the 2018 Michael L. J. Apuzzo Resident Literature Award for Creativity and Innovation for “Middle Meningeal Artery Embolization for Chronic Subdural Hematoma: A Series of 60 Cases". The Apuzzo Award, established in 2017, recognizes outstanding work by a Weill Cornell Medicine neurosurgery resident that most exemplifies original thinking and creativity.

Dr. Link’s paper explores an innovative procedure for...

From a new publication in the prestigious journal Brain, Dr. Theodore Schwartz and his lab team, in partnership with Dr. Catherine Schevon of Columbia University, describe laboratory findings that may have important implications for epilepsy in humans. The report, “Role of inhibitory control in modulating focal seizure spread", explains an observation that has long confounded epilepsy researchers: the distance between a seizure’s focus, where it originates and where intense activity can be...

The 2018 National Residency Match is complete and we are pleased to announce that Maricruz Rivera and Gary Kocharian will be joining our program in June. They have both already distinguished themselves in their young careers as future clinician-scientist leaders in our field and impressed us with their maturity, compassion and drive. We are proud to have the opportunity to train these two outstanding physicians.