Innovator of the Year

Since its inception, the Congress of Neurological Surgeons has championed innovation in the specialty of neurosurgery.
 
Do you have an innovation that will benefit the field of neurosurgery? Submit your product, program, initiative for the eighth annual Innovator of the Year Award. The award is open to individuals, companies, and programs.
 
Submissions will be judged on novelty, translatability, and potential for impact in addition to assessing general merits of the innovation.

The top three finalists will present their innovation on the biggest stage in neurosurgery at the 2025 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, CA and meeting attendees will have the opportunity to vote for the winner onsite.

The winner will be announced during Wednesday’s General Scientific Session.

Awardees will be invited to present updates on their neurosurgical innovation on multiple CNS platforms through the 2026 Annual Meeting. They will also be provided with priority access to the growing CNS Innovation community for networking and further career development.

Apply using the form below—applications will be accepted through June 25, 2025.

Past Award Winners:

• 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