The Duke University School of Medicine's Office of Faculty has announced the 2024 Faculty Award winners. In all, 25 School of Medicine faculty members were recognized, two from the Department of Neurosurgery.
Rory Goodwin, MD, PhD, was honored with the Research Mentoring Award: Mentoring Excellence Award in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. This award recognizes faculty excellence as demonstrated by the accomplishments of individual mentees, by programs implemented by the mentor, or by exceptional creativity in mentoring.
Goodwin is an associate professor, director for spinal oncology, and director of spine services for the Duke Center for Brain and Spine Metastasis. He received his medical degree and PhD from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. At Hopkins he founded, led, and participated in programs focused on underrepresented minority students and served as national president for the Student National Medical Association.
In 2023, he received an award from the Congress of Neurological Surgeons Foundation for the DEI Impact Project, a prize that recognizes a neurosurgeon for their outstanding work in DEI and community engagement to share best practices in addressing disparity in equity and inclusion.
He completed his neurosurgical residency at Hopkins. During this time, he served as a medical officer for the Food and Drug Administration, Division of Orthopedic Devices; graduated from the Global Clinical Scholars Research Training Program at Harvard Medical School; and completed an enfolded Complex Spine Fellowship at Hopkins. He has received research awards from the UNCF-Merck Science Initiative and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Goodwin has a research interest in translational biomarkers and clinical outcomes for patients diagnosed with spinal tumors, and genomic and proteomic predictors in brain and spinal oncology.
Stephen Harward, MD, PhD, has been named the Whitehead Scholar. The Whitehead Scholars Program exists to nurture promising biomedical researchers at Duke.The Whitehead Scholars are generally junior faculty who have exceptional potential for research and research training in the biomedical sciences.
Harward is a neurosurgeon-scientist with an interest in developing novel, non-invasive approaches to treating brain disease. He cares for patients with epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, essential tremor, neuropathy, and chronic pain, offering neuromodulatory therapies including focused ultrasound, deep brain stimulation, responsive nerve stimulation, vagal nerve stimulation, and spinal cord stimulation.
Harward completed his undergraduate, graduate, and medical education at Duke, as well as his neurosurgical residency and a one-year fellowship in stereotactic and functional neurosurgery. He joined the Duke faculty in July 2023 as an assistant professor in the departments of Neurosurgery and Neurobiology.
Academically, Harward has developed a basic science laboratory centered on advancing focused ultrasound for neuromodulation, opening the blood brain barrier, and immune activation. He is actively investigating applications for focused ultrasound to treat brain tumors, epilepsy, and psychiatric disease.