In the Department of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, our faculty and research team support innovative and bold-thinking residents who are involved in high-quality research that will change the face of neurosurgery and medicine. We encourage residents to be curious and pose questions, and then take further steps to conduct investigations that find the answers to those questions.
Our residents are actively involved in both clinical and basic science research, with many serving as first author on high-impact publications. Junior residents participate in protected academic days, and each resident completes at least one fully protected academic “enrichment” year, typically as a PGY-4, where they can explore and develop their unique interests. Residents have spent their enrichment years:
- Completing enfolded subspecialty fellowships and fellowships outside of Mount Sinai
- Pursuing advanced degrees
- Conducting research with physician scientists
- Developing medical technologies with Mount Sinai BioDesign, our in-house medical device incubator
Our research team will provide you with assistance for everything you need to conduct a successful research project, including regulatory submission, data acquisition and analysis, funding requests, and compliance while offering weekly virtual office hours to support you along the way. We also encourage residents to identify faculty mentors who can help guide them through their research projects. Several neurosurgery faculty members head up NIH-funded laboratories that are constantly pushing out pioneering research and running clinical trials – learn more about them here.
Recent Resident Research Highlights
NREF Fellowship Grant Award
Dr. Trevor Hardigan, Class of ’25, received the 2022-23 Academy of Neurological Surgeons Research Fellowship Grant through the Neurosurgery Research & Education Foundation (NREF) for his research on the role of IL-3 in post-stroke inflammation.
Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery Resident Clinical Award
Dr. Brandon Philbrick, Class of ’28, received the 2022 CNS Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery Resident Clinical Award for his abstract “Intracranial Magnetic Resonance Guided Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy for Epilepsy: A Single Institution's Experience of 226 Cases.”
Zeiss Brain Tumor Award
Dr. Alexander Schüpper, Class of ’26, was the 2021 recipient of the Zeiss Brain Tumor Award for his abstract "5-Aminolevulinic Acid for Enhanced Surgical Visualization of High-Grade Gliomas: A Prospective, Multicenter Study," published in Journal of Neurosurgery. It is the first-ever multicenter 5-ALA study in the U.S.
Grants for Skull Base Imaging Research
Dr. Rui Feng, Class of ’25, received the Advanced Neuroimaging Research Program 2020 Pilot Grant and the North American Skull Base Society (NASBS) Research Grant, both of which support her research on complex imaging of facial nerves in skull base surgical planning and resection of vestibular schwannoma.
Ranked No. 1 in New York State, No. 15 in the U.S.
In NIH funding for Neurosurgery, Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research