Dr. Kuo immigrated to New York City from Taiwan, and attended Hunter H.S. and The Bronx H.S. of Science. While in high school, he pursued research on microbial genetic recombination at the City College of New York, and placed Fifth in the National Westinghouse Science Talent Search. Awarded National Merit and Harvard National scholarships, he studied at Harvard University and graduated with summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors. As an undergraduate in Prof. Kleckner's lab at Harvard's Dept. of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, he received Ford Foundation grant for senior honors thesis research on transposable genetic elements, which earned highest honors and was published in Genetics. Then he received a National Institutes of Health Medical Scientist Training Program Fellowship; in 1998, he simultaneously earned an MD from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) at Harvard Medical School, and a PhD degree from MIT's Dept. of Biology. At MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, he received funding for graduate research with Prof. Sive to clone and identify many novel genes involved in early development of the nervous system. These studies contributed to the study of embryonic brain development, stem cell biology, neurogenesis and tumorigenesis. He was inducted into Sigma Xi - Research Society of North America, and gave numerous invited national and international presentations.
The seed for Dr. Kuo's neurosurgery career was planted by Profs. Jenkins and Gehrke in introductory HST neuroanatomy, and then nurtured by mentors at the Brigham & Women's and Massachusetts General Hospitals (Profs. Black, Scott, Stieg, Ogilvy and Cosgrove). Subsequently, he trained in clinical neurosurgery at the University of Southern California with Profs. Weiss, Apuzzo, McComb and Giannotta. Awarded an American Brain Tumor Association - NREF fellowship in 2003, Dr. Kuo was mentored by Prof. Rutka at the University of Toronto's Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre for translational research in medulloblastoma diagnosis and treatment. In 2005, he was recruited by Prof. Dempsey to the University of Wisconsin to direct the Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program and the Brain Tumor Research Laboratory. He is a member of the UW Comprehensive Cancer Center and co-directs both the multidisciplinary brain tumor clinic and the multidisciplinary pituitary tumor clinic. His clinical practice is primarily focused on taking care of patients with benign and malignant brain tumors, and the long term goal of ongoing cancer stem cell research is to develop novel cancer therapies.
Dr. Kuo is married to the love of his life, Linda, an immunologist, who makes him whole with a wonderful sense of humor, patience and support. They were blessed with a son, James, in the summer of 2006, and are expecting another baby in late fall 2007. The entire Kuo family looks forward to further adventures together |
 |
|
