After seventeen years in a private neurosurgical practice in Northern Virginia, I joined the academic practice of neurosurgery in Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh about 10 years ago. My private practice experience was not typical—I spent seven years on the Institutional Review Board at Inova Fairfax Hospital and five years as a reviewer on a variety of NIH Study Sections. I was heavily involved in brain injury pharmaceutical trials during that time through the American Brain Injury Consortium based in Richmond, VA. During that time, I founded and ran the Washington Computer Assisted Surgery Society meetings held in the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, MD. Since I joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Allegheny General Hospital in 2004, I have pursued academic collaborations to develop the ideas put forward in this proposal. In addition to my rank as an Associate Professor of Neurosurgery (Drexel), I am an adjunct at Carnegie Mellon University in both the Robotics Institute and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. I have taught the “Surgery for Engineers” course there for 15 semesters and am co-advise Doctoral and Masters students.

surgery neurosurgery innovation physician