Houston, September 30, 2024 -- L. Dade Lunsford, MD, Lars Leksell Professor & Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, was honored with the Congress of Neurological Surgeon's Founder's Laurel Award, September 30, at the CNS Annual Meeting in Houston Texas. The award recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to neurosurgery education.
Dr. Lunsford has been instrumental in developing the careers of countless neurosurgeons through his leadership position in the department's residency and fellowship programs and during his tenure as the department's chair. He also leads the highly successful training course Principles and Practice of Gamma Knife Radiosurgery that has trained more than 2,800 surgeons, oncologists, and physicists from around the world in the field of radiosurgery establishing the University of Pittsburgh as a major international radiosurgery training site.
An internationally recognized authority and pioneer in the field of stereotactic radoiosurgery, Dr. Lunsford was responsible for installing the Gamma Knife at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 1987, the fifth unit ever built. This medical center was the first in North America to offer this state-of-the-art, minimally invasive form of brain surgery. Since that time, more than 19,000 patients have undergone brain stereotactic radiosurgery using the Gamma Knife.
Dr. Lunsford also played a major role in the founding of the International Radiosurgery Research Foundation, a world-wide group of academic and clinical centers of excellence performing retrospective and prospective outcomes research, cooperative clinical investigations, and prospective clinical trials conducted at participating institutions to evaluate a variety of clinical indications.
In 2007, Dr. Lunsford was named a Distinguished Professor at the University of Pittsburgh, the highest honor the institution can bestow on an academic professor and reserved for faculty who have achieved scholarly eminence in their discipline. In 2023, the university established the L. Dade Lunsford Endowed Chair at the University of Pittsburgh, conferring Costas G. Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, as the inaugural chair holder.