As a first-year med student, Elad Levy tried to balance competitive rowing with the demands of school. But he quickly came to realize he couldn’t pursue both at the highest level. He chose medicine, discovered neurosurgery—and was soon on a path to transforming the field.
Now the L. Nelson Hopkins Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, Levy was instrumental in establishing a new standard of care for stroke and continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible. In this episode, he talks with host Ellen Goldbaum about the resistance he and his colleagues faced in the early days of stroke intervention, what it was like to implant one of the first brain-computer interfaces in a patient with paralysis, and his current push toward a future in which brain surgery requires no incisions.
Credits:
Host: Ellen Goldbaum
Guest: Elad Levy
Writer/Producer: Laura Silverman
Production and editing by UB Video Production Group
Coming this fall: Driven to Discover is taking a break for the summer. We’ll be back in early September with a new slate of UB innovators discussing what sparked their passion for their subject and what makes their research meaningful for the world at large.
