The Clinical Neuro-Oncology Lab Team

Steven D. Chang, MD

Dr. Steven D. Chang is a Professor and Vice Chairman of Strategic Development and Innovation in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford. He is also the inaugural holder of the Robert C. And Jeannette Powell Professorship in the Neurosciences at Stanford University School of Medicine. His clinical work and research focuses on the treatment of brain tumors and cerebrovascular disease.

After receiving his Medical Degree and completing his Neurosurgery residency training at Stanford University, Dr. Chang joined Stanford’s Department of Neurosurgery in 2000. He was named full professor in 2008, and that same year was appointed as the Powell Professor in the Neurosciences. Dr. Chang has a national and international reputation as an expert in both microsurgery and radiosurgery for treatment of brain, spine, and skull base tumors, and is the Co-Director of the Surgical Neuro-Oncology Program. His radiosurgery practice focuses on the use of the Cyberknife to treat neoplasms of the brain and spine. He was instrumental in the rapid growth of the Stanford Cyberknife Radiosurgery Program and is currently Co-Director of this program. Dr. Chang also specializes in the treatment arteriovenous malformations and cavernous malformations of the brain and spine, and surgical treatment of intracranial aneurysms. A fellowship trained cerebrovascular neurosurgeon, Dr. Chang specializes in multi-modality therapy for these vascular lesions. He is also an expert in both microsurgery and radiosurgery for treatment of trigeminal neuralgia.

Dr. Chang's research focuses on clinical outcomes for radiosurgery of brain and spine tumors. His lab has active research projects involving genetic analysis of arteriovenous malformation patients. He is the Director of the Stanford Neurogenetics Oncology Program and the Director of the Stanford Neuromolecular Innovations Program. He is the author or co-author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.

David Park, MD, PhD

David Park, MD, PhD, is a neurosurgeon who graduated from medical school at the Catholic University of Korea in Seoul, South Korea. He then completed his internship and residency training in the Department of Neurosurgery at Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital. He became a board-certified neurosurgeon in South Korea in 2014 and subsequently completed a 2-year fellowship at the same hospital, specializing in brain tumor surgery and skull base surgery. During his residency, he also attended graduate school while practicing neurosurgery as a trainee and successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled “Combination therapy for gliomas using temozolomide and interferon-beta secreting human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells,” in 2015.

After completing his fellowship in South Korea, Dr. Park moved to Singapore in 2016 and worked as a Clinical Fellow (Clinical Associate) at the National Neuroscience Institute for one year, focusing on Neurosurgical Oncology and Skull Base Surgery.

In 2017, Dr. Park joined Dr. Christian Badr’s lab at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, conducting translational research on glioblastoma and studying the role of fatty acids and lipid metabolism in glioblastoma to complement his clinical expertise.

During this time, Dr. Park also launched a startup based on his invention of an intraoperative diagnostic tool for tumor detection during glioma surgery. He collaborated with bioengineers at M.I.T. to develop a prototype and secured seed funding from the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund Program. As an alumnus of the MIT Sandbox program, he continues to develop this project.

In 2020, Dr. Park served as a Neurosurgical Oncology and Radiosurgery Fellow (Teaching Associate) for a year at North Shore University Hospital, Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, in Long Island, New York, where he worked with Dr. Michael Schulder on brain tumor surgery including advanced techniques, such as Laser Interstitial Thermal Therapy (LITT) and Stereotactic Radiosurgery (SRS).

From July 2021 to June 2022, he completed another fellowship in Neurosurgical Oncology and Radiosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland. He devoted his efforts to minimally invasive neurosurgical techniques such as LITT and Gamma Knife SRS, as well as awake brain tumor surgery under the guidance of Drs. Gene Barnett, Lilyana Angelov, and Ali Mohammadi.

As of July 2022, Dr. Park has joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University as a Clinical Instructor, working with Dr. Steven D. Chang in the fields of Neurosurgical Oncology and CyberKnife SRS.