Top neurosurgeon in the country to serve as next distinguished speaker

Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, who once picked vegetables in the fields as an illegal immigrant farmworker and is now one of the country’s top neurosurgeons, will serve as the next speaker for The University of Texas-Pan American’s Distinguished Speakers Series Tuesday, Nov. 17.

Quiñones, an associate professor of neurosurgery and oncology at Johns Hopkins University, serves as the director of the brain tumor program at the Johns Hopkins Bayview campus. His presentation, titled “Beyond the Borders of the Mind: Tertiary Care Centers in the 21st Century,” will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Fine Arts Auditorium.

Priority seating for UTPA students, faculty and staff with a valid UTPA ID will begin at 7 p.m. while doors will open for the general public at 7:20 p.m. The event is free and seating is limited.

Quiñones, who went from teaching at the age of 18 in his hometown of Mexicali, Mexico to working in the fields and on the railroads in the United States to earning a medical degree, focuses on the surgical treatment of primary and metastatic brain tumors, with an emphasis on motor and speech mapping during surgery.

The Harvard University honors graduate is an expert in treating intradural spinal tumors as well as brainstem and eloquent brain tumors in adults with the use of neurophysiological monitoring during surgery. In addition, Quiñones conducts numerous research efforts on the role of stem cells in the origin of brain tumors and the potential role stem cells can play in fighting the brain cancer and regaining neurological function.

To learn more about Quiñones, visit http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmn/W07/feature1.cfm.

For more information or if special accommodations are needed, call 956/316-7989.