WSSFN 2021

Short Biography: Edward Chang is the Joan and Sanford Weill Chair and Jeanne Robertson Distinguished Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Chang’s clinical expertise is surgical therapies for epilepsy, pain, and brain tumors. He specializes in advanced neurophysiologic brain mapping methods, including awake speech and motor mapping, to safely perform neurosurgical procedures in eloquent areas of the brain. His research focuses on the discovery of cortical mechanisms of high-order neurological function in humans. Dr. Chang’s laboratory has demonstrated the detailed functional organization of the human speech cortex and has translated those discoveries towards the development of a speech neuroprosthetic device to restore communication for people living with paralysis. Dr. Chang is the 2015 Blavatnik National Laureate in Life Sciences and member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Short Biography: G. Courtine is Professor of Neurosciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Adjunct Professor in the neurosurgical department of the University Hospital Lausanne (CHUV) and Faculty of Medicine and Biology of the University of Lausanne (UNIL). Together with functional neurosurgeon Prof. Jocelyne Bloch, he founded and lead the Defitech Center for Interventional Neurotherapies, named .NeuroRestore. .NeuroRestore develops neurotherapies involving surgical interventions to improve recovery from neurological disorders. G. and Jocelyne also founded ONWARD Medical to scale up their neurotherapies to widely available clinical treatments. G. is Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of ONWARD Medical N.V., which is now traded on Euronext (ONWD).

Short Biography: Bradley J. Erickson, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Radiology, with joint appointments in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences and the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Physiology. He is a practicing neuroradiologist at Mayo Clinic. He also runs a lab with 17 post-doctoral fellows that focus on the application of artificial intelligence and deep learning to medical imaging. This research includes the development and validation of algorithms that can detect progression, regression or risk of disease, and the prediction of molecular markers from medical images. His work has been funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Disease; National Institute of General Medical Sciences; National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke; and National Cancer Institute.

He has developed numerous computer-based tools that have been put into clinical practice, including the clinical image viewer that has been used for more than 25 years. He also founded Teramedica which was one of the first vendor-neutral archive companies, and more recently FlowSIGMA, which applies intelligent process automation to clinical practice. He also has several AI-based tools that have been put into clinical practice.

Short Biography: Dr. Haseltine is a Neuroscientist whose research focused on sensory physiology and brain plasticity. After completing post-doctoral training in Neuroanatomy at Vanderbilt University, he applied his expertise in sensory physiology to the aerospace industry, before moving to Disney where he developed Virtual Reality displays for theme parks. Dr. Haseltine was Executive Vice President in charge of R&D at Disney when he was recruited to run the Research Directorate at NSA after 9/11, then was promoted to oversee science and technology for the entire US Intelligence community as its first CTO. He is currently CEO of Discovery Democracy, a startup that makes sophisticated industrial sensors. A named inventor on 67 patents and neuroscience journalist for Psychology Today, he is the author of 5 books, including the Amazon Bestseller, The Spy in Moscow Station.

Short Biography: Dr. Lozano is a neurosurgeon and University Professor at the University of Toronto. He is best known for his work in the field of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) and Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS). His team has mapped cortical and subcortical circuits in the human brain and has advanced novel treatments for Parkinson’s disease and for depression, dystonia, anorexia, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Lozano has over 750 publications and serves on the boards of several international organizations. He has trained over 70 international post-doctoral fellows. He has received a number of honors including Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Sevilla, the Olivecrona Medal, the Pioneer in Medicine Award and the Dandy Medal. He has been elected to the Royal Society of Canada, has received the Order of Spain and is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Short Biography: Dr. Morishita is an Associate Professor and chief of functional neurosurgery unit in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Fukuoka University Faculty of Medicine, Fukuoka, Japan. He serves as an active board member for academic societies such as World Society for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery and The Japanese Congress of Neurological Surgeons. He is also an editor for scientific journals including World Neurosurgery and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

Dr. Morishita’s clinical practice covers a wide variety of neurological disorders, including movement disorders, intractable pain, spasticity, epilepsy, and stroke. His primary research interest is in neuroimaging analysis of neuronal circuits associated with deep brain stimulation (DBS) for movement and neuropsychiatric disorders. Especially, he is highly recognized for the connectomic studies visualizing 3D neuronal networks associated with electrical stimulation fields. His research projects have been supported by JSPS (KAKENHI) and other foundations. He is actively working to expand the application of functional neurosurgical procedures to new fields.

Short Biography: Frank Rudzicz is a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute at Unity Health Toronto, Director of Artificial Intelligence at Surgical Safety Technologies Inc., an associate professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, co-founder of WinterLight Labs Inc., faculty member at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and CIFAR Chair in Artificial Intelligence. His work is in machine learning in healthcare, especially in natural language processing, speech recognition, and surgical safety. His research has appeared in popular media such as Scientific American, Wired, CBC, and the New York Times, and in scientific press such as Nature.``

Short Biography: Russell R. Lonser received his M.D. from Loma Linda University. Upon completion of his residency the University of Utah (2001), he joined the staff of the Surgical Neurology Branch at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He was Chief of the Surgical Neurology Branch at NIH before becoming Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at Ohio State University in 2012. He holds the Dardinger Family Chair in Neurosurgical Oncology.

  Dr. Lonser’s research interests include development of drug delivery paradigms for the central nervous system pathology. He is an author on over 350 scientific and clinical publications. He received the Tumor Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Section on Tumors (2001) and Mahaley Clinical Research Award from the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Section on Tumors (2013). He was the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Section on Tumors Bittner Lecturer (2017) and the American Academy of Neurological Surgery Edward H. Oldfield Lecturer (2018).

  His contributions to organized neurosurgery include membership on the Executive Committee of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. He was the Treasurer and President of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. He is the Secretary of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons. He was the head of the Research Subcommittee in Head, Neck and Spine Injury Committee for the National Football League for 10 years. He has been actively involved in the mentoring and training of over 40 neurosurgical fellows. He has served on the Editorial Boards for NEUROSURGERY, World Neurosurgery and Journal of Neurosurgery. He is Academic Editor for PLoS One and Science Reports. He is Consulting Editor for Neurosurgery Clinics of North America and Associate Editor for Neurosurgery. He has edit 3 drug delivery and neurosurgical textbooks.