Current Weill Cornell Neurosurgery Residents

Andrew Garton received his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was a member of both the medical student honor society Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. As a medical student, Dr. Garton worked in Dr. E. Sander Connolly's Cerebrovascular Laboratory, where he was awarded a NIH/NIA T-35 grant for his investigation into biomarkers of functional outcome in intracerebral hemorrhage.

Dr. Garton earned his bachelor’s degree with honors and high distinction from the University of Michigan, with concentrations in the Psychology, Biochemistry, and Statistics departments. He completed his honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Nestor Lopez-Duran, PhD, investigating cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and the psychoneuroendocrine effects of sleep deprivation, among other projects. Dr. Garton has taught medical students in many roles, including leading workshops for third-year medical students aiming to improve communication skills for doctors having end-of-life and goals-of-care conversations.

Benjamin Hartley received his medical degree in 2015 from the State University of New York Downstate College of Medicine, where he was inducted into the Gold Foundation Humanism Honor Society and was awarded a Downstate Alumni Association research fellowship, multiple American Anatomy Association research travel grants, a Downstate Excellence in Neuroscience Award and a Clinical Neuroscience Pathway Award.

Prior to medical school, Dr. Hartley earned his neurobiology bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and a biology education master’s degree from Fordham University. He has also served with the Teach for America Corps as a science teacher in underserved communities.

Dr. Hartley has enjoyed more than 10 years of research conducted at a variety of institutions, with projects involving C. elegans systems, computational neuroscience, glioblastoma, neurosurgical informatics and molecular memory formation in rodents.

Alexandra Giantini Larsen is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, where she was vice president of the AANS medical student chapter and co-president of the Harvard Medical School chapter of the Association of Women Surgeons. She earned her bachelor’s degree with honors in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Larsen spent a year as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. E. Antonio Chiocca, Chairman of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where her research was focused on viral therapies for glioblastoma. She also has spent time as a researcher in the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital with Dr. Edward Smith and in the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital with Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. She was an observer in our own department during her college years, when we recognized her emerging talents, and we are delighted to have her join us for her residency.

Alexander D. Ramos received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis in 2008. In 2014 he received a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences from the University of California, San Francisco, where in 2016 he received his M.D.

Dr. Ramos has an extensive list of publications and awards to his credit. He was the Washington University Alejandro Ramirez Scholar in 2004, and was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship in 2007. He has also been awarded an NIH Medical Scientist Training Fellowship, a California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Training Grant, and an NIH F31 Training Grant. His peer-reviewed publications include work investigating the roles of long noncoding RNAs in neural development and glioma progression, the regulation of neuronal differentiation of embryonic and postnatal neural stem cells, and astrocyte-to-neuron reprogramming.