Current Weill Cornell Neurosurgery Residents

Weill Cornell Medicine provides a highly competitive, demanding environment for neurosurgery residents. Our seven-year program produces some of the top neurosurgeons in the country. About the Program

John Chae, MD

PGY-3 Resident

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John Chae received his MD this year from Weill Cornell Medical College, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical student honor society. During his tenure at Weill Cornell, John was awarded the 2019 Siegel Family Student Prize for high academic achievement and leadership as well as the 2018 Marcus M. Reienberg, M.D. Award in Community Service. He received a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry from Williams College, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. John has been an active member of the Weill Cornell Medicine AANS Neurosurgery Interest Group, where he twice directed the Medical Student Neurosurgery Training Camp, and helped organize a medical student publication group. John has served as a mentor with HPREP, designed to boost medical school enrollment rates of underrepresented groups. Among his research projects are several conducted under the mentorship of Dr. Jeffrey Greenfield on congenital brain malformations, including the creation of a novel pathophysiology-based classification system.

Andrew Garton, MD

PGY-6 Resident

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Andrew Garton received his MD from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he was a member of both the medical student honor society Alpha Omega Alpha and the Gold Humanism Honor Society. As a medical student, Dr. Garton worked in Dr. E. Sander Connolly's Cerebrovascular Laboratory, where he was awarded a NIH/NIA T-35 grant for his investigation into biomarkers of functional outcome in intracerebral hemorrhage.

Dr. Garton earned his bachelor’s degree with honors and high distinction from the University of Michigan, with concentrations in the Psychology, Biochemistry, and Statistics departments. He completed his honors thesis under the direction of Dr. Nestor Lopez-Duran, PhD, investigating cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and the psychoneuroendocrine effects of sleep deprivation, among other projects. Dr. Garton has taught medical students in many roles, including leading workshops for third-year medical students aiming to improve communication skills for doctors having end-of-life and goals-of-care conversations.

Sergio Guadix, MD

PGY-2 Resident

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Dr. Guadix received his MD in 2023 from Weill Cornell Medical College, where he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical student honor society. During his time here at Weill Cornell, Dr. Guadix has gotten to know the neurosurgeons well. He has conducted research in endovascular neurosurgery alongside Dr. Jared Knopman, worked on imaging studies in craniosynostosis with Dr. Caitlin Hoffman, and co-authored a series of academic papers on neurosurgery during Covid and another paper on stereotactic radiosurgery with Dr. Susan Pannullo.

Dr. Guadix took a year off from his medical studies to work under the mentorship of Dr. Mark Souweidane as the Rudin Medical Student Fellow in Pediatric Neuro-oncology, researching enhanced drug delivery systems for pediatric brain tumors. He was awarded the 2022 ChadTough Defeat DIPG Foundation Gamechanger Grant to continue those studies. Dr. Guadix received his bachelor’s degree in cognitive science from the University of Pennsylvania, then completed a yearlong post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Johns Hopkins University before attending Weill Cornell Medical College.

Natasha Kharas, MD, PhD

PGY-4 Resident

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Dr. Natasha Kharas received her MD and PhD degrees from McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. A native New Yorker, Natasha earned her undergraduate degree in neural science (with highest honors) from NYU before enrolling in the MD/PhD program at McGovern, where she was elected to the medical student honor society Alpha Omega Alpha. Dr. Kharas has been working with Dr. Casey Halpern’s lab at Stanford University to examine the role of intracranial stimulation in epilepsy, and with Dr. David Sandberg at McGovern on a translational research project examining the safety and pharmacokinetics of injecting the chemotherapy drug panobinostat directly into the fourth ventricle to treat posterior fossa tumors in children. She received an NIH F31 grant for her PhD dissertation research, which examined the neural underpinnings of how sleep improves cognitive performance; she also performed research that examined the neural basis for how unconscious visual stimuli alter behavior.

Gary Kocharian, M.D.

PGY-7 Resident

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Dr. Gary Kocharian completed his M.D. at Weill Cornell Medical College after receiving a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University Honors College. Dr. Kocharian completed an extra year of research during his time at medical school in the Laboratory of Molecular Neurosurgery, where he helped develop a novel method for profiling changes in gene expression in specific populations of brain cells following vector-mediated viral gene therapy.

Throughout his time at medical school, Dr. Kocharian worked with Dr. Mark Souweidane on a variety of projects to advance the field of pediatric neurosurgery. He has also served as president of the Weill Cornell Medical College student chapter of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. An avid musician and athlete, Dr. Kocharian is also fluent in multiple languages.

Alexandra Giantini Larsen, MD

PGY-6 Resident

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Alexandra Giantini Larsen is a graduate of Harvard Medical School, where she was vice president of the AANS medical student chapter and co-president of the Harvard Medical School chapter of the Association of Women Surgeons. She earned her bachelor’s degree with honors in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Larsen spent a year as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. E. Antonio Chiocca, Chair of Neurosurgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, where her research was focused on viral therapies for glioblastoma. She also has spent time as a researcher in the Vascular Biology Program at Boston Children's Hospital with Dr. Edward Smith and in the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Hospital with Dr. Alfredo Quinones-Hinojosa. She was an observer in our own department during her college years, when we recognized her emerging talents, and we are delighted to have her join us for her residency.

Lily McLaughlin, MD

PGY-1 Resident

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Lily McLaughlin received her MD in 2024 from Georgetown University School of Medicine, where she was a member of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. We met Lily last summer, when she completed a sub-internship month that showed her to be extremely talented, responsible, and committed to patient care. Prior to medical school, Lily earned a master’s degree in biomedical studies at Drexel University after completing her bachelor’s degree in biology at Villanova. She has co-authored numerous academic research papers, many of them with colleagues from Memorial Sloan Kettering, where she spent three years as a clinical research associate. She has researched and presented on healthcare disparities and participated in mentoring programs and community health initiatives.

Maricruz Rivera, M.D., Ph.D.

PGY-7 Resident

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Dr. Maricruz Rivera completed her M.D. and Ph.D. at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. Her Ph.D. work centered around mechanisms by which glioblastoma develops resistance to radiation therapy; in particular, she explored novel pathways activated in gliomas that repair damaged DNA and prevent DNA damage responses necessary for inducing tumor cell death following radiation. Dr. Rivera received her biochemistry undergraduate degree from the University of California, Riverside, where she also continued to work with developmentally disabled adults at a state-licensed care home that she founded while in high school.

Kate Rosen, MD

PGY-3 Resident

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Kate Rosen received her MD this year from the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, where she was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical student honor society, and of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, which recognizes senior medical students for excellence in compassionate clinical care. Prior to medical school, Kate studied biology, public health, and chemistry at Santa Clara University, where she earned her Bachelor of Science degree. She has been a mentor to students under-represented in medicine and is one of the founders of The Differentialists, a student group formed to build diagnostic reasoning skills. Kate’s research projects have included studying delayed cerebral ischemia after pituitary macroadenoma resection and evaluating the association between the Covid-19 pandemic and postpartum maternal mental health; her study of fluid overload in pediatric ICU patients was named Best Abstract by a Trainee at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

David Sykes, MD

PGY-1 Resident

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David Sykes received his MD in 2024 from Duke University School of Medicine, where he was a Medical Student Member of both the AANS and CNS and was awarded an AO Spine Young Investigator Research Grant Award. Before medical school, David earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and music from Washington University in St. Louis. He has conducted clinical research in the spine division at Duke and has worked in the Brain Tool Lab, where medicine and engineering come together in the development of novel technologies. He has co-authored many peer-reviewed articles, primarily on spinal tumors, injuries, and degeneration, and has studied the use of advanced technologies such as augmented reality in neurosurgery. David completed a sub-internship with us last year and proved himself to be both talented and collaborative.