Albert Kim MD, PhD

Albert H. Kim, MD, PhD, a professor of neurological surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the inaugural William H. Danforth Washington University Physician Scholar. He is the first researcher named as part of the School of Medicine’s new Physician-Scientist Investigators Initiative, which aims to recruit and retain elite physician-scientists whose work has already indelibly changed their fields.

Kim is also a genetics, neurology, and developmental biology professor at the School of Medicine and the inaugural director of the Brain Tumor Center at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. Kim’s pioneering research, which has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) since 2012, has transformed our understanding of one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer, glioblastoma, as well as aggressive benign brain tumors such as meningioma.

Kim earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard University, followed by a master’s degree in biology & biomedical sciences at Washington University School of Medicine, and then medical and doctoral degrees at New York University. He completed his neurosurgery residency at Harvard Medical School and its two affiliated hospitals, Brigham and Women’s and Boston Children’s hospitals, before pursuing fellowship training in complex skull base and cerebrovascular surgery at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. He joined the Washington University faculty in 2011.