RANDY Smith Lecturer
2025: Karin Muraszko, MD
Julian T. Hoff Professor and Chair University of Michigan
Lecture: A Lifelong odyssey to understand and treat cerebrovascular disease, with a few detours
Karin M. Muraszko was born and raised in New Jersey. She was educated at Yale University, having received a B.S. with a double major in history and biology. She is a graduate from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. She did her internship, neurosurgical training, and pediatric neurosurgical training at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center-the New York Neurological Institute, and then became a Senior Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health-NINDS in the Surgical Neurology Branch.
Dr. Muraszko arrived at the University of Michigan in 1990. She became Chief of the Pediatric Neurosurgery Service in 1995, and became Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery in January of 2005, becoming the Julian T. Hoff Professor of Neurosurgery in 2006. She is a Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery with joint appointments in Plastic Surgery and Pediatrics, and is the first woman to chair an academic neurosurgical department in the United States. She completed her term as Chair in 2022. She has served on numerous committees within the CNS, AANS, ACS, the Pediatric Section of the AANS, the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgery, as well as having been a Director of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons. Dr. Muraszko was a member of the ACGME’s Neurosurgical Residency Review Committee (RRC) and was selected as a member of the RRC’s Executive Committee. She continues to serve on the
Executive Committee of Women in Neurosurgery. She serves as a Director of the American Board of Pediatric Neurosurgery and continues her role as an examiner for the ABNS/ABPNS.
She was elected Vice Chair of the UMHS Hospital Executive Board and has served as Chair of the U-M Children & Women’s Executive Committee, and on the Physician’s Advisory Committee of the Spina Bifida Association and the March of Dimes. Dr. Muraszko is also honored to be the first woman appointed as a Director of the American Board of Neurological Surgeons and the Neurosurgery Resident Review Committee of the ACGME, as well as the first woman to serve as President of the SNS (2019-2020). She was inducted into the National Academy of Medicine in 2020 and serves as the Chair of the Research Advisory Board of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.
She has received numerous awards including: the Association of Women Surgeons and American College of Surgeons Nina Starr Braunwald Award, American Medical Association Inspirational Physician Award, Spina Bifida Association Outstanding Medical Professional Award, the American Health Council Best in Healthcare Award, the Castle Connoly Exceptional Women in Medicine and Top Doctors Award, the Congress Neurological Surgeons Distinguished Service Award, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons Humanitarian Award, and the University of Michigan: Community Service Award, the Sarah Goddard Power Award, the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award, Gender Equity Award of the U of M American Medical Women’s Association, the Women in Academic Medicine Impact Award (renamed the Karin M. Muraszko for the Advancement of Women in Academic Medicine Award), the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons 2024 Virginia Kneeland Frantz ’22 Award for Distinguished Women in Medicine and the Henry Russel Lecturer (University’s highest honor for a senior member of its active faculty).
Dr. Muraszko’s research interests include experimental therapies for the treatment of pediatric brain tumors, the treatment and diagnosis of Chiari malformations and other congenital anomalies of the spine and brain, and the treatment of children with complex craniofacial anomalies. She is director of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Clinic at the University of Michigan Rogel Comprehensive Cancer Center, and has worked to develop new therapies for brain tumors. She is on the Executive and Scientific Advisory Committee of the Chad Carr Pediatric Brain Tumor Institue and is on the Executive Committee of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. She is the co-founder of Project Shunt at the University of Michigan. This is a program that provided care to indigent children in Guatemala and was a yearly medical mission of neurosurgeons, anesthesiologists, neurosurgical residents, and nursing staff from the University of Michigan, under her direction since 1998. Her various research projects have contributed to her authorship of over 200 peer reviewed publications, as well as numerous book chapters, 3 books and many non-peer reviewed publications and media posts.