Robert E. Gross, MD, PhD is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Neurosurgery and Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and New Jersey Medical School, both part of Rutgers. He also holds an appointment in the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology. Dr. Gross is an expert in neuromodulation and employing innovative techniques that use electrical impulses to target nerves within the brain, lessening life-altering symptoms of severe disorders, including epilepsy as well as Parkinson’s disease, depression and others. He was director of the surgical team at Emory University and The Emory Clinic, where he was on the faculty for 22 years, that was at the forefront of developing deep brain stimulation as a treatment for drug-resistant seizures in epilepsy, reducing the frequency and severity of seizures for patients with epilepsy. He has also led the development and use of stereotactic laser ablation (laser interstitial thermal therapy or LITT), publishing the first paper on laser ablation for mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, and is the co-principal investigator of the national multi-center trial (sponsored by Medtronic) of this therapy. He was an early adopter of stereo-EEG for diagnosing onset of drug-resistant epilepsy and uses this to develop personalized surgical treatment plans including open resection when indicated, awake craniotomy when indicated, laser ablation, deep brain stimulation, responsive neurostimulation (RNS, Neuropace) and, most recently, radio-frequency ablation. He has been a participant and leader of clinical trials and is a frequent national and international lecturer and course faculty in each of these areas.
Dr. Gross has maintained an active clinical and laboratory-based research program for the last 25 years, funded by the National Institutes of Health continuously since 2005. He is the principal investigator of five NIH-funded projects and is a co-investigator or site investigator on nine additional NIH and industry-supported research projects. His latest R01-grant–supported research seeks to understand how current neuromodulation treatments can be improved to provide better outcomes for patients with epilepsy. Advancing medical knowledge of how neural stimulation works well—and doesn’t work well—has been the goal of Dr. Gross’ research for 25 years.
One of Dr. Gross’ primary accomplishments while at Emory was to drive forward innovation as the founder and director of the Emory Neuromodulation Technology Innovation Center, or ENTICe, through which he engaged faculty in multiple disciplines across two universities to collaborate on potentially life-changing biomedical technology. At Rutgers and RWJBarnabas Health, he continues to pursue the same mission as Director of the Neurotechnology Innovation Center at Rutgers (N-TICeR) and a member of the Brain Health Institute. This will take advantage of the widespread and deep expertise in our system across the various campuses including the College of Engineering. As he has said: “Partnering their expertise with scientists, fellows and students leads to innovative studies and new knowledge to help find resolutions to the dilemmas in care that we are unable to fix currently.”
Dr. Gross is originally from Long Island, N.Y., and is delighted to return to the NJ/NY area.