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Seminars Session
Our Honorary Guest Speakers
Prof Hugues Duffau
MD, PhD
Topic of Talk:
Long-term Survival & Quality of Life After a Connectome-Based Surgery in Awake Patients with Low-Grade Glioma: Towards a Meta-Networking Organization of Brain Processing
Hugues DUFFAU (MD, PhD) is Professor and Chairman of the Neurosurgery Department in the Montpellier University Medical Center and Head of the INSERM 1191 Team "Plasticity of the central nervous system, human stem cells and glial tumors" at the Institute of Functional Genomics of Montpellier (France). He is an expert in the awake cognitive neurosurgery of slow-growing brain tumors, as low-grade gliomas, a routine which he has developed since more than twenty years. His fundamental approach is centered on the concepts of the brain connectomics and neuroplasticity, breaking with the traditional localizationist view of cerebral processing. For his innovative work in neurosurgery and neurosciences, he was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa six times, and he was the youngest recipient of the prestigious Herbert Olivecrona Award (Nobel Prize of neurosurgery) from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. He has written five textbooks and over 500 publications in international journals ranging from neurosurgery and neurooncology to fundamental neurosciences, including cognitive sciences and brain plasticity, for a total of more than 45,000 citations and with an h-index of 113. He gave more than 690 invited lectures, and was invited as a visiting professor in more than 60 institutions. He is member of Editorial boards of many journals (as Brain and Language, Neurosurgery or Neuro-oncology) and ad-hoc reviewer for around 100 journals (over 950 reviews) including: New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet Oncology, Nature Medicine, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neurology; Annals of Neurology, Brain, Cerebral Cortex, Trends in Cognitive Science, Current Biology, etc. He is member of many societies, such as the French Academy of Medicine, the French Academy of Surgery, the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium, the World Academy of Neurological Surgery, the Young Neurosurgeons Award Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, the Scientific Committee of the European Association for Neurooncology, etc…
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Dr Ralf Buhl
Privatdozent Dr. med.
Topic of Talk:
Differential Diagnosis in Brain Tumors
Dr Ralf Buhl received his surgical and neurosurgical training at the Universities of Leeds, Cambridge / UK and Kiel / Germany. Since 2009 he is Head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Städtisches Klinikum Solingen, a teaching hospital of the University of Cologne, Germany. He was invited as Visiting Professor in Albany, Cleveland and Boston, USA as well as invited lecturer in Hangzhou, China and Izmir, Turkey. Dr. Buhl is also involved in improving quality in medicine and has received a special training for Peer Review in Berlin (IQM). From April 2015 until March 2018 he was also Medical director of the Städtisches Klinikum Solingen. His main interest in Neurosurgery are meningiomas, cavernous malformations and spinal tumors. He has published about 52 papers and is reviewer for different neurosurgical journals.
Fun fact: he treated George Clooney back in 2015!
Dr Georgios Matis
MD, MSc, PhD, FINR(CH)
Topic of Talk:
Spinal Cord Stimulation: An Old or a New Therapy?
Dr. Georgios Matis is a senior consultant for neurosurgery. He leads the chronic pain/spasticity section of the Department of Stereotactic & Functional Neurosurgery at the University Hospital of Cologne. He has been trained in Greece (General University Hospital of Alexandroupolis, G. Papanikolaou General Hospital of Thessaloniki & 417 Army Equity Fund Hospital of Athens), USA (Department of Neurosurgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY), Switzerland (Department of Neuroradiology, University Hospital of Zurich, Zurich) and Germany (Department of Stereotactic & Functional Neurosurgery, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne). Dr. Matis is a member of two medical associations (Thessaloniki, Greece & North Rhine, Germany) and also a member of the German Neuromodulation Society (DGNM) and the International Neuromodulation Society (INS). He serves as a reviewer for many international journals and is an Editorial Board member for Neuromodulation: Technology at the Neural Interface and Interventional Pain Medicine and Neuromodulation. He holds the position of Editor-in-Chief of The Internet Journal of Neurosurgery. Dr. Matis has published many articles in Greek and international Pubmed-indexed journals and held many lectures as an invited speaker at numerous international congresses and webinars. At the same time, he is the Co-Chair of the Medical and Public Education and Engagement Committee of the International Neuromodulation Society and member of the Marketing Committee of the North American Neuromodulation Society (NANS). Dr Matis is involved in many international clinical studies and has been active as an instructor for many colleagues in Germany and abroad. He is also an active member of the medical advisory board of the German CRPS Support Group and a member of several online consultation platforms. He is actively involved in social media trying to raise awareness about spinal cord stimulation, intrathecal therapies and neuromodulation.
