Professor Di Rocco is an internationally recognized pediatric neurosurgeon, Director and Chairman of the Neurosurgery Institute, Catholic University of Rome. Since May 2014, he has moved to Hannover, Germany where he is Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the International Neuroscience Institute (INI). He performed more than 12,000 neurosurgical operations on brain and spinal cord tumors, hydrocephalus, arachnoid cysts, craniosynostosis, cerebral and spine malformations (hemimegalencephaly, cortical dysplasia, lipomyelomeningocele, myelomeningocele, spinal lipoma, Chiari type I malformation), neurophacomatoses and epileptic disorders. He wrote more than 430 articles in international peer reviewed journals, books and chapters in books. He is the main Editor of Child's Nervous System, the Official Journal of the International Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery, European Journal for Pediatric Neurosurgery, Japanese Society for Pediatric Neurosurgey, Korean Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery, Brasilian Society for Pediatric Neurosurgery.
Dachling Pang is Professor and Chief of Paediatric Neurosurgery at University of California, Davis, and Chief of the Regional Centre of Paediatric Neurosurgery of Northern California Kaiser Foundation. His research interests are neuroembryology, paediatric spinal injuries, spinal cord congenital malformations, embryology and bony malformations of the craniovertebral junction, intraoperative neurophysiology monitoring, and craniopharyngioma. His publications, focused on the same areas, include over 180 refereed articles and chapters. He is Scientific Advisor and Associate Editor for the journal Child"s Nervous System; and Honorary Consultant Paediatric Neurosurgeon, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, United Kingdom. He has been an invited speaker or as visiting professor in over 340 occasions in many countries, and was guest neurosurgeon for teaching purposes in many places including Hong Kong, United Kingdom, Singapore, India, Beijing, Nanjing, and Guangzhou in China, Taiwan, and South Africa.
Dr. Rutka assumed his appointment in the Department of Surgery, Division of Neurosurgery of the University of Toronto in 1990, and has been on the surgical staff at the Hospital for Sick Children in the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery since that time. Dr. Rutka's primary research and clinical interests relate to the science and surgery of human brain tumours; his recent clinical interests have centred on the surgical treatment of epilepsy in children. In 2013, Dr Rutka was installed as the 7th Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neurosurgery. In 2014, he was appointed to the Order of Ontario, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a resident in the Province, and he received an honorary degree, Honoris Causa, from the Faculty of Medicine at Bahcesehir University in Istanbul. He has over 400 peer reviewed publications.