Neurosurgery Department Celebrates Residency Program Graduates of 2022
By on
This year, the UCSF Neurosurgery Residency Program congratulates our three graduates, who recently completed their seven-year training program in the department. Our graduating chief residents have already made significant impact on the field of neurosurgery – learn more about their accomplishments below.
Taemin Oh, MD
Taemin Oh, MD completed his undergraduate education at Yale University, where he majored in political science and graduated with distinction. He subsequently earned his medical degree from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. During medical school, he completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at UCSF and Northwestern University, studying mechanisms of immunosuppression in glioma and glioma immunotherapy.
During neurosurgery residency at UCSF, he developed dual interests in pediatric and spine neurosurgery. He has trained extensively with the support of the world-class UCSF pediatric and spine neurosurgery teams, working most under the mentorship of Nalin Gupta, MD PhD, Christopher Ames, MD, and Dean Chou, MD. He is a recipient of the Neurosurgery Research & Education Foundation Grant, which he utilized to study mechanisms of immune evasion in medulloblastoma under the mentorship of William Weiss, MD PhD and Manish Aghi, MD PhD. His career goal is to provide comprehensive neurosurgical care to pediatric patients, with specific emphasis on spinal pathologies such as myelomeningocele, tethered cord, Chiari malformation, cranio-cervical junction instability, and neuromuscular scoliosis.
After graduation, he will complete a Pediatric Neurosurgery fellowship at the University of Utah followed by a Pediatric Spinal Deformity fellowship at Shriners Hospital for Children in Philadelphia.
Kunal P. Raygor, MD completed his undergraduate degree in Neurobiology at Harvard College prior to receiving his medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. During medical school, he was awarded the CTSI TL1 Predoctoral Fellowship.
As a neurosurgery resident at UCSF, Kunal’s clinical focus was in skull base and cerebrovascular surgery primarily under the mentorship of Adib Abla, MD. His clinical research interests have focused on microsurgical and endovascular management of cerebrovascular pathology. He also completed an NIH-funded fellowship with Rong Wang, PhD studying novel murine models of brain arteriovenous malformations. His research has been awarded the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Pain Walter H. Sweet Young Investigator Award, the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Socioeconomics Robert Florin, MD Resident Award, as well as resident research awards through the UCSF Department of Neurological Surgery.
After residency, Kunal will complete a University at Buffalo Neurosurgery Endovascular Fellowship under the guidance of Elad Levy, MD MBA, Adnan Siddiqui, MD PhD, and Jason Davies, MD PhD.
John Burke, MD, PhD completed his undergraduate education at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He earned his medical and graduate degrees from the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. During undergraduate and medical school, he received the AOA Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship, and was a member of Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu engineering honor societies. In his graduate work, his examined the neural basis of human episodic memory.
During residency he was initially interested intracranial electrophysiology but ultimately developed a focus in spinal surgery. He transitioned to spinal deformity surgery under the mentorship of Christopher Ames, MD. In residency, he was the recipient of an F32 NRSA post-doctoral National Service Award from NIH, a Catalyst grant to investigate spinal electrophysiological biomarkers of movement, the Charlie Kuntz Scholar award (twice) from the joint AANS/CNS spine section, the John Hanberry Award from the San Francisco Neurological Society, the AANS Ellen and Stewart Dunsker Award for Clinical Research, the CNS DePuy-Synthes Award for Resident Research, and the UCSF Translational Science Institute Resident Research Award. He has published over 75 peer reviewed journal articles, and his overall research focus involves using electrophysiological signals to make spinal deformity surgery safer for patients.
After graduation, he will begin a spine fellowship with Christopher Ames, MD at UCSF in spinal deformity and spinal oncology, and he has accepted a position at Oklahoma University as an Assistant Professor in spinal surgery in the Department of Neurosurgery starting in 2023.
Featured Publications
Burke, JF, Gugger J, Ding K, Kim JA, Foreman B, Yue JK, Puccio AM, Yuh EL, Sun X, Rabinowitz M, Vassar MJ, Taylor SR, Winkler EA, Deng H, McCrea M, Stein MB, Robertson CS, Levin HS, Dikmen S,...Zafonte R. Association of Posttraumatic Epilepsy With 1-Year Outcomes After Traumatic Brain Injury.JAMA Netw Open. 2021 Dec 1;4(12):e2140191. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2021.40191. PMID: 34964854; PMCID: PMC8717106..
