Gabriel Zada, MD

Gabriel Zada, MD, MS, FAANS, FACS, is Professor of Neurological Surgery, Otolaryngology, Medicine and Physiology & Neuroscience at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and an internationally recognized leader in brain, skull base, and pituitary tumor surgery. He serves as Vice Chair of Education and Neurosurgery Residency Program Director for the USC Department of Neurological Surgery, Surgical Director of the USC Brain Tumor Center, Director of the USC Endoscopic Skull Base Surgery Program, and Co-Director of the USC Pituitary Center.Dr. Zada has performed more than 3,000 cranial operations, with particular expertise in minimally invasive and endoscopic brain and skull base tumor approaches. He directs a comprehensive minimally invasive cranial surgery program spanning endoscopic endonasal skull base and pituitary surgery, awake craniotomy, port-based surgery for deep-seated tumors, keyhole neurosurgery, and Gamma Knife radiosurgery. He completed fellowship training in endoscopic pituitary and skull base neurosurgery under Dr. Edward R. Laws at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, with advanced training under Dr. Paolo Cappabianca in Naples, Italy.An NIH-funded principal investigator, Dr. Zada leads a research laboratory at the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute focused on the genomics and epigenetics of brain and pituitary tumors, supported by multiple NIH R01 awards from NINDS and NCI. He has authored more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and two surgical textbooks — The Atlas of Sellar and Parasellar Lesions (downloaded >200,000 times) and Subcortical Neurosurgery. He is an inventor on multiple U.S. patents for minimally invasive surgical devices. Dr. Zada is the Editor of Neurosurgical Focus (JNS Publishing Group) and previously served as Editorial Board Chair of The Journal of Neurosurgery. He is President-Elect (2026–2027) of the AANS/CNS Joint Section on Tumors and serves as an oral board examiner for the American Board of Neurological Surgery. Recent visiting professorships and named lectureships include NYU, Penn State, UT Southwestern, Stanford, and the UCSF Boldrey Lectureship (2026). His honors include the AANS Mizuho Award for Minimally Invasive Brain Tumor Surgery (2021 and 2024), and he serves as a neuro-trauma consultant for the National Football League.Expertise RankingsAs a destination neurosurgeon, Dr. Zada performs more than 300 procedures per year on patients from across the U.S. and around the world. He is consistently ranked among the most published and most cited experts in his field by the independent physician-ranking platforms Expertscape and FindExpertMD, which rank clinicians objectively by the volume and impact of their peer-reviewed scientific contributions. He is currently ranked on these platforms as the #1 expert in the world for CNS cysts; the #1 neurosurgeon expert in California for pituitary neoplasms, meningiomas, and neuroendoscopy; and the #1 neurosurgeon in the Los Angeles region for brain neoplasms, CNS neoplasms, and craniotomy.

• Carmichael, John
• Giannotta, Steven
• Mack, William
• Attenello, Frank
• Cohen-Gadol, Aaron