Francesco Sala MD

Francesco Sala is Professor and Chair of Neurosurgery at the University of Verona. His main fields of interest are Pediatric Neurosurgery and Intraoperative Neurophysiology. In 1994-1995 and 1998-1999 he worked in New York as Research Fellow at the New York University Neurosurgery Labs and Clinical Fellow in Intraoperative Neurophysiology at the Institute for Neurology and Neurosurgery, respectively. Upon his return to Verona, he established the Intraoperative Neurophysiology Unit at the Department of Neurosurgery. In 2005 he was a co-founder and in 2013-2015 President of the International Society for Intraoperative Neurophysiology.

One of his main fields of interest is the intraoperative neurophysiological assessment of the motor system during central nervous system tumor surgery. Following a Clinical Fellowship at the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery of the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto (2003-2004), in 2009 he was appointed as Responsible for the Pediatric Neurosurgery Unit at the Institute of Neurosurgery in Verona. He’s currently holding appointments as Executive Board Members with both the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery and the European Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery. His research interests in Pediatric Neurosurgery embrace functional surgery of central nervous system tumors, Chiari malformation, and spinal dysraphisms.

Prof. Sala is particularly committed to the training of young neurosurgeons and the development of intraoperative neurophysiology in the global neurosurgical community. In 2016 he was appointed as the first Chair of the Neuromonitoring Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies. Since 2018 he is a Board Member (Scientific Chair) of the European Association of Neurosurgical Societies. In October 2020 he was appointed Vice-President of the Italian Neurosurgical Society.