Appointment of Daniel Yoshor, MD, as Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery and Vice President, Clinical Integration and Innovation


March 16, 2020

To:Faculty, Students, and Staff

From:J. Larry Jameson, MD, PhD
Kevin Mahoney


We are delighted to announce the appointment of Daniel Yoshor, M.D., as Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery in the Perelman School of Medicine and Vice President of Clinical Integration and Innovation for the Health System. Dr. Yoshor, a nationally recognized neurosurgeon and neuroscientist, is currently the Marc J. Shapiro Endowed Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. His appointment as department chair at Penn takes effect July 1.

Dr. Yoshor joined the faculty at Baylor in 2000 and ascended through the academic ranks to Professor in the Departments of Neurosurgery, Neurology, and Neuroscience. A dynamic leader and accomplished administrator, Dr. Yoshor was Program Director for the Baylor neurosurgery residency program from 2008-2016 and has served as Chief of Neurosurgery at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center since 2010. He became Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery in 2015, and over the past five years has impressively advanced the Baylor department in all its missions. Under his leadership, the department rose to No. 3 in the country in NIH funding. He also led a service at Baylor St. Luke’s that was previously unranked to a No. 18 ranking nationally in the Neurology and Neurosurgery adult specialty in U.S. News & World Report.

As a clinical neurosurgeon, Dr. Yoshor focuses on endoscopic pituitary and skull base surgery, as well as brain tumor and epilepsy surgery. He has one of the largest pituitary surgery practices in the nation. He also has extensive experience in clinical brain mapping and in the development and clinical implementation of novel neuro-technologies.

A well-respected scientist, Dr. Yoshor has received extramural federal peer-reviewed funding since 2004. As a visual neuroscientist, he studies mechanisms of sensory processing in human visual cortex. He is working with a large team of scientists, engineers and clinicians to develop a cortical visual prosthetic that employs brain stimulation to restore vision to the blind. Work from Dr. Yoshor’s laboratory has been published in leading scientific journals, including the Journal of Neuroscience, Nature Neuroscience, Neuron, PNAS, Current Biology, and Nature Medicine. A report of some of his most recent work is currently in press for publication in the journal Cell.

Dr. Yoshor received a B.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University in 1989 and graduated from medical school at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine in 1993. He completed neurosurgical residency at Baylor College of Medicine, and then a clinical fellowship in brain tumor and epilepsy surgery and brain mapping at the University of California San Francisco.

In keeping with his accomplishments, Dr. Yoshor is an elected member of the American Academy of Neurological Surgery and the Society of Neurological Surgeons, and an Examiner for the American Board of Neurological Surgeons. He is also Section Editor for the journal Neurosurgery and a standing member of the NIH NST-1 Study Section, and he directs a program for research education in neurosurgery that is funded by an NINDS R25 training grant.

Dr. Yoshor’s appointment follows a national search led by John Glick, MD. We are grateful to Dr. Glick and the Search Committee for their thorough work to bring Dr. Yoshor to Penn Medicine and begin the next phase of leadership of this impactful department.

Under the leadership of M. Sean Grady, MD, for the past two decades, the Department of Neurosurgery has established itself among the finest in the country. We are grateful for Dr. Grady’s vision and energetic leadership, which have enhanced the patient-care experience and established exciting new lines of research, including collaborative grants for work in traumatic brain injury and neuro-oncology. Under Dr. Grady’s leadership, the Department’s residency program has substantially exceeded national goals for increasing the number of women in the field. Dr. Grady will continue to serve as Physician Director of the Neurosciences Service Line.