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Keith L. Black, M.D., Director of the Cedars-Sinai Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute and holder of the Ruth and Lawrence Harvey Chair in Neuroscience, along with Stefan-M. Pulst, M.D., holder of the Carmen and Louis Warschaw Chair in Neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, announce the appointment of Asha Das, M.D., to direct the Institute's neuro-oncology program. With credentials from several highly respected programs for medical training and cancer care, she brings extensive experience in both patient treatment and research.
The recruitment of Dr. Das advances the Institute's founding vision of a facility that would unravel the complexities of brain tumors by combining a few of the brightest minds in research with some of the most talented specialists in surgery and care.
Working in unison from their various perspectives, these professionals would improve treatments for patients in their care while searching for mechanisms that allowed tumors to form and grow, then creating new methods to stop them.
From 1996 until she joined the Institute, Dr. Das was a clinical teacher at the National University of Singapore. While there, she also served as a consulting neurologist for the National Neuroscience Institute, the National University Hospital, the National Cancer Centre, and Changi General Hospital.
She also continued to conduct research, studying population trends of benign and malignant tumors of the central nervous system, developmental characteristics of gliomas, processes related to meningioma development and recurrence, and viral encephalitis.
Board-certified in the United States in neurology and psychiatry, Dr. Das is active in professional societies in this country and in Southeast Asia. She earned her bachelor's degree from Cornell University and her medical degree from Cornell University Medical College. She served an internship and residency in internal medicine and a residency in neurology at The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. She also completed a fellowship in neuro-oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
The New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of the Academy of Medicine, the Journal of Neuro-oncology, and other professional journals have published papers prepared by Dr. Das. She has written several chapters in neurology textbooks and has been invited to make presentations at numerous professional meetings, such as the Annual Meeting of the Society of Neuro-oncology in Chicago in 2000.
"I'm very pleased that Dr. Das has accepted the invitation to join us," said Dr. Black. "I'm sure that with her education and background, she will have a significant impact on the lives of our patients and the success of our research programs."
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is one of the largest non-profit academic medical centers in the Western United States. For the fifth straight two-year period, Cedars-Sinai has been named Southern California's gold standard in health care in an independent survey. Cedars-Sinai is internationally renowned for its diagnostic and treatment capabilities and its broad spectrum of programs and services, as well as breakthrough in biomedical research and superlative medical education. Named one of the 100 "Most Wired" hospitals in health care in 2001, the Medical Center ranks among the top 10 non-university hospitals in the nation for its research activities.
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