Dias Receives Young Clinician Investigator Award

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Mark S. Dias, M.D., assistant professor of neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo and chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Children's Hospital, has received the 1995 Research Foundation Young Clinician Investigator Award.

Dias will use the award to study "Spinal Cord Histogenesis in an Animal Model of Neural Tube Defect." Neural tube defects are the most common developmental central nervous system abnormality, effecting roughly 1 in 1,000 newborn children annually.

Dias plans to investigate the histogenesis of the spinal cord in a chick model of neural tube defects. These studies should provide a better understanding of neuronal growth and development in children with neural tube defects, and may eventually lead to effective clinical interventions.

Dias received a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in animal physiology from the University of California at Davis and a medical degree from The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Johns Hopkins, received both the Pittsburgh Neuroscience Society Award for Clinical Research and the Nathaniel Simpkins Fellowship in Pediatric Neurosurgury, and was nominated to "Quien es Quien in U.S. Medical Care."

He lives in Orchard Park.