Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, FACS

Dr. Steven Schiff is a pediatric neurosurgeon with interests in neural control engineering, sustainable health engineering and global health. He founded the Center for Neural Engineering at Penn State University, writing the first book on Neural Control Engineering (MIT Press, 2012). At Yale University, he served as the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neurosurgery, as Vice Chair for Global Health established a program in Global Neurosurgery, and held secondary appointments as Professor of Epidemiology in the Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases in the Yale School of Public Health, and as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Science. He received the NIH Director’s Pioneer and Transformative Awards in 2015 and 2018, respectively, which enabled him to pursue his interests in the sustainable control of infant infections in the developing world. This work has evolved into an exploration of what Schiff calls Predictive Personalized Public Health (P3H), and included leading the discovery of a new highly lethal infant brain disease in Africa - Neonatal Paenibacilliosis. In June of 2026, he accepted the position of Director of the Fogarty International Center at NIH, and NIH Associate Director for International Research. In arrangement with NIH, he continues scientific collaboration and mentoring in research to control infant disease in Africa as Visiting Professor at Yale.