Yale School of Medicine Welcomes Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, as Vice Chair of Global Health in Neurosurgery

The Yale Department of Neurosurgery at the Yale School of Medicine is pleased to announce the appointment of Steven Schiff, MD, PhD, as the Vice-Chair for Global Health in Neurosurgery. In this role, Dr. Schiff will build upon his extensive experience in pediatric neurosurgery with his complementary work in neural control engineering, sustainable health engineering, and global health.

Before arriving at Yale, Dr. Schiff built a robust career as both a pediatric neurosurgeon and a prolific researcher. Dr. Schiff graduated from Duke University School of Medicine in 1980 and received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1985. He then served as a pediatric neurosurgeon at the Children’s National Medical Center for the better part of a decade, co-directed the epilepsy surgery program, and, for five years, treated children with complex epilepsy cases from the NIH Intramural program requiring surgery.

Throughout his career, Dr. Schiff has explored the intersection of physics and medicine. He holds a fellowship in both the American College of Surgeons and the American Physical Society. In addition to actively publishing in physics, Dr. Schiff served for 18 consecutive years on the Editorial Boards of the journals of the American Physical Society: Physical Review E, Physical Review Letters (as Divisional Associate Editor), and Physical Review X.

Dr. Schiff is a pioneer of neural control engineering, focusing on unifying the biophysics of spikes, seizures, and spreading depression and controlling seizures and spreading depression. He founded the Center for Neural Engineering at Penn State University and wrote the first textbook on Neural Control Engineering (MIT Press, 2012).

In recent years, Dr. Schiff’s work fused his interests in physics and engineering with novel approaches to tackling global health problems in neurosurgery, such as work in Africa on hydrocephalus, neonatal sepsis, sustainable MRI imaging, brain growth and image analysis, and satellite rainfall analysis. To support such efforts, he received the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2015 and an NIH Director’s Transformative Award in 2018.

“I am thrilled to have Dr. Schiff join Yale faculty with his unparalleled expertise in pediatric neurosurgery, along with his deep interest in global health in which he translates his engineering knowledge to better the lives of children at home and across the globe,” says Murat Gunel, MD, Nixdorff-German professor of neurosurgery and chair of the department of neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine.

“Yale offers a superb environment to bring together my interests at the intersection of engineering and public health towards creating effective new strategies to better treat and prevent some of the most common conditions currently requiring neurosurgery in young children worldwide,” says Dr. Schiff.