Cloward Award Recipient
2015: Edward H. Oldfield, MD
Professor and Chairman of Neurosurgery, University of Toronto
Lecture: Taming Dysfunctional Brain Circuits
Edward Oldfield was born in Mt. Sterling, Kentucky. He completed three years of undergraduate education before graduating from medical school at the University of Kentucky in 1973. He completed a basic surgical residency at Vanderbilt University 1973-75, and then spent a year as Visiting Registrar in Neurology and Neurosurgery at The National Hospital for Nervous Disease, Queen Square, London, England. He completed his neurosurgical training at Vanderbilt University in 1980.
After a year in private practice in Lexington, KY, he joined the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a Senior Staff Fellow, and completed a 2-year intramural NIH fellowship in cellular immunology of tumors. In 1984, he became Chief of the Clinical Neurosurgery Section, Surgical Neurology Branch, NINDS, and from 1986-2007 served as the Chief of the Surgical Neurology Branch, NINDS, NIH. At the NIH, he led laboratory and clinical research efforts in the areas of brain and pituitary tumors, syringomyelia, von Hippel-Lindau disease, spinal arteriovenous malformations, pathophysiology and therapy of cerebral vasospasm after subarachnoid hemorrhage, and development of new drug delivery approaches for the central nervous system.
He joined the Department of Neurosurgery at the University of Virginia in 2007 where he leads a multidisciplinary effort in the treatment of pituitary tumors and contributes to the research program in the Department of Neurosurgery. He holds the Crutchfield Chair in Neurosurgery and is a Professor of Neurosurgery and Internal Medicine.
His contributions to academic and organized neurosurgery include membership on the Editorial Board of Neurosurgery 1992-94, the Editorial Board of The Journal of Neurosurgery 1994-2002, serving as Co-Chairman 2001-2002. In 2005-2006, he was elected Vice President of the Society of Neurological Surgeons, and served as its President in 2007. Dr. Oldfield has received numerous accolades and awards during his career, including the Grass Medal for Meritorious Research in Neurological Science in 1995, Farber Award of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons “for leadership, vision, and dedication, and for scholarly contributions to the field of Brain Tumor Research” in 1999, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award, University of Kentucky Medical Alumni Association in 2006.
He is the author of over 400 original scientific and clinical contributions to the medical literature and the co-inventor of patents on convection-enhanced drug delivery and genetic therapy. Many of his former fellows hold positions in academic medicine, including several departmental chairmen.
