Renowned neurosurgeon, specialist in brain tumors, named endowed professor

Joseph M. Piepmeier, M.D., who specializes in brain tumors and spinal cord traumas, has been appointed the Nixdorff-German Professor of Neurosurgery. A member of the Yale faculty since 1982, Piepmeier serves as director of the Neuro-oncology Unit at the Comprehensive Cancer Center and is director of the School of Medicine’s Neuro-oncology Laboratory. In both the clinic and the laboratory he focuses on neuro-oncology and is among the first neurosurgeons in Connecticut to use the gamma knife, an instrument that allows surgeons to operate on the brain without using a scalpel.

Piepmeier has served as a co-investigator on two research projects on spinal cord trauma, the National Acute Spinal Cord Injury Study II and the National Acute Spinal Cord Injury Study III. He was also the primary investigator on several grant-funded research projects on brain abnormalities. Piepmeier’s honors include an Allied National Research Award and the Wakeman Award for Research in the Neurosciences. Piepmeier has been a visiting professor and lecturer at universities across the globe, including the Nipon Medical School in Tokyo, the Al Shorouk Hospital in Cairo, the Hospital Sainte-Anne in Paris, the University of Lund in Sweden and the University of Torino in Italy. The chair of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons from 1999 to 2001, he is currently secretary of the Neurosurgical Society of America and of the Connecticut Neurosurgical Society. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuro-oncology, and has served on the editorial boards of several other professional journals.