ja_mageia

John Golfinos, M.D.
New York, New York

John George Golfinos was born in New York, NY on July 2, 1962 of parents who had emigrated from Greece. His father was a cardiologist. John went to the Trinity School on the Upper West Side, which his children attend and where he now serves as a trustee. In high school, he was a National Merit Scholar and received awards in competitions in Latin translation as well as co-captaining the soccer and lacrosse teams. He went to Princeton University, majored in biology and played four years of rugby, serving as an officer in his final year. He continued to play rugby throughout medical school at Columbia. The team reached the national championship for graduate schools in his second year and there lost to Georgia Chiropractic College. With the encouragement of Dr. Bennett Stein, he accepted a residency position at the Barrow Neurological Institute under Robert Spetzler and completed his training in 1995. This included a year learning molecular biology in the glioma laboratories of Adrienne Scheck and Joan Shapiro.

Dr. Golfinos returned to New York to join the Department of Neurosurgery at New York University led by Patrick Kelly. Serving in the tumor division as assistant professor, his early clinical research was on low-grade gliomas and image-guided neurosurgery. He was the founder and co-director of the first Gamma Knife Radiosurgery suite in New York City. With both radiosurgical and microsurgical skull base training, he collaborated with colleagues in otolaryngology to specialize in vestibular schwannomas, neurofibromatosis Type 2, and other skull base pathologies while still maintaining a general neuro-oncologic surgical practice. In 2005 he was awarded promotion and tenure. In 2008, he was co-founder with J. Thomas Roland of the neurofibromatosis center at NYU. In that year, for his work with patients with neurofibromatosis type II, he was awarded the Children’s Humanitarian Award by the Children’s Tumor Foundation. In 2009, he became Associate Professor and Chairman of the department after the retirement of Dr. Kelly.

Dr. Golfinos’ clinical interests and practice are limited to brain tumors and skull base tumors, especially in patients with neurofibromatosis Type II. His current research interests include MRI tracking of single cells in glioma and metastatic melanoma as well as clinical outcomes of radiosurgery for brain metastases. He continues to investigate outcomes of both microsurgery and radiosurgery for vestibular schwannomas. In 2010, Dr. Golfinos became the President of the New York Society for Neurosurgery.

Dr. Golfinos and his wife, Stephanie, have three children – Jason, Chloë, and Phoebe. Outside of medicine, Dr. Golfinos devotes time to his family, tennis, and piano. He participates in the New York Oenological Society which, mirabile dictu, also counts three other members of the Society of Neurological Surgeons in its ranks. The three Golfinos children are all still in secondary school. Only one has mentioned a career in neurosurgery.