Thank you for your interest in the CNS Innovator of the Year Award.
Beginning in 2026, the Innovator of the Year finalists will be selected from the Innovation Institute Fellowship applicant pool. Submissions are judged on novelty, translatability, and potential for impact in addition to assessing the general merits of the innovation.
Innovator of the Year awardees are announced at the CNS Annual Meeting and given the opportunity to present their neurosurgical innovation on multiple CNS platforms during CNS Annual Meetings. They will also be provided with priority access to the growing CNS Innovation community for networking and further career development.
Past Award Winners:
- 2025: Navzer Engineer, PhD | Vivistim Paired VNS System | MicroTransponder, Inc. | Plano, TX
- 2024: Alexandra J. Golby, MD | NousNav: An Open-Source Low-Cost Navigation System for Low and Middle Income Countries | Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School | Boston, MA
- 2023: Recai Yilmaz, MD | Intelligent Operative Surgical Bimanual Skills Monitoring and Feedback | Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital | Montreal, Canada
- 2022: Brandon Sherrod, MD | Motorized Robotic Closed Cervical Traction | University of Utah Health Care | Salt Lake City, UT
- 2021: Samuel Browd, MD, PhD | Proprio Paradigm System | University of Washington | Seattle, WA
- 2019: Lynn McGrath, MD | Harnessing AI and Smartphones to Develop the Next Generation of TBI Diagnostics | University of Washington/Harborview Medical Center | Seattle, WA
- 2018: Nirmeen Zagzoog, MD | Novel Extended Vertebral Registration for Wrong Level Spinal Surgery (NEVER Wrong) | McMaster University | Hamilton Ontario, Canada
- 2017: Daniel A. Orringer, MD | For his work on work on rapid intraoperative diagnosis through Stimulated Raman Histology | NYU Langone Health | New York, NY