Mark E. Linskey MD

Mark Elwood Linskey, born in Oak Park, Illinois. At Dartmouth, he majored in Philosophy, graduating junior Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with highest honours in moral philosophy. He then entered Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons on a US Navy Health Professions Scholarship. He was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha in his junior year, graduated second in his class, and earned the Admiral David Willard Lyons Award for academic excellence.

Residency training was completed at the University of Pittsburgh under Peter Jannetta where he developed interests in skull base microsurgery and stereotactic radiosurgery. He won both the Preuss Award for Brain Tumor Research and the AANS van Wagenen Fellowship in 1993. He completed two post-doctoral research fellowships in neuro-oncology, one with Mark Gilbert at the Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and the other with Mark Noble at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in London.

After Fellowship he served as an active duty neurosurgeon in the US Navy. There, he directed the Neurosurgery Clinic at Naval Medical Center Oakland, was attached to the USNS Mercy and served as chief of neurosurgery at Naval Medical Center in San Diego in 1996-8. Among many military decorations, he received the Navy Achievement Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Armed Forces Reserve Medal with a bronze hourglass.

He was recruited to the University of Arkansas in1998 and, in 2004, assumed the chair of neurosurgery at UC Irvine. There, he rebuilt the department and re-established the neurosurgery residency training program. He is currently Program Director, Surgical Co-Director of the Neuro-Oncology Program, Director of the Cranial Nerve Clinic, and Head of the Stereotactic Radiosurgery Service. He has been honoured with the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award by the Arnold P. Gold