MD, FRCSC

  • Director, Pediatric Neurosurgical Oncology Dana Farber/Boston Children’s Hospital Cancer Center; Director, QI Program Department of Neurosurgery

I am a pediatric neurosurgeon committed to the best possible outcomes for children with brain tumors at Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and through my efforts to raise standards of care here and abroad.

I completed my residency at the University of Ottawa, in Canada, and was a fellow in pediatric neurosurgery at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and in Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. My joint training in both neurosurgery and basic neuroscience has helped me to treat patients at the highest level and conduct research that is forging new ground in our understanding of brain cancer biology.

I am a director of the combined program in pediatric neurosurgical oncology at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. I co-direct Boston Children’s Hospital’s Brain Tumor program, a multidisciplinary program that is a model nationwide and that I helped to establish.

Since 1992, I have been in charge of the Neurosurgery Department’s Quality Improvement program. I have developed an outcomes database for the Department of Neurosurgery and am working on standardizing outcome measures in our field. My work in this area aims to establish national outcomes measures for pediatric neurosurgical procedures for the first time. Boston Children’s Hospital’s industry-leading intraoperative MRI technology has contributed to this effort, allowing me to see whether we are accomplishing our goals as  surgery progresses, and helping to set new benchmarks and leading to the best possible outcomes.

I am committed to improving care overseas, through my relationship with CCHE (Children’s Cancer Hospital Egypt) 57357 in Cairo, Egypt  We have established a “twinning training program” between Boston Children’s/Dana Farber Cancer Institute and CCHE 57357 in Pediatric Oncology and are developing a similar training program in pediatric neurosurgery.

I have been honored to receive some of my field’s most prestigious honors, including the Young Investigator Award from the American Association of Neurological Neurosurgeons in 1996 and the Women in Medicine prize in 2009 from Boston Children’s Hospital.

 

 

Education

 

Undergraduate

Medical Academy, 1977

Sofia, Bulgaria

Medical School

University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, 1980

Toronto, Canada

Internship

Saint Joseph’s Health Centre, 1980-1981

Toronto, Canada

Residency

Neurosurgery-University of Ottawa, 1981-1986

Ottawa, Canada

Fellowship

Pediatric Neurosurgery-Hospital for Sick Children, 1987-1988

Toronto, Canada

 

Fellowship

Neuroscience Research-David Mahoney Institute of Neuroscience, University of Pennsylvania, 1988-1990

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Certifications

 

  • ABNS – American Board of Neurological Surgery
  • ABPNS – American Board of Pediatric Neurological Surgery
  • Neurology (FRCSC)
  • Neurological Surgery
  • Pediatric Neurological Surgery

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