Pittsburgh, May 15, 2025 -- Fourth-year Pitt medical student Zhishuo (Chris) Wei, MSc, received the Department of Neurological Surgery Theodore Kurze Senior Prize for Excellence in Neurological Surgery and Clinical Neurosciences on May 15. The award is given to a senior University of Pittsburgh medical student going into neurosurgical residency training. Wei will graduate from Pitt on May 18 and begin his residency at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago this coming June.
Theodore Kurze, MD—former chair of neurosurgery at the University of Southern California (USC) and a mentor and colleague of former Pitt neurosurgery chair Peter Jannetta, MD—was a pioneering neurosurgeon who radically altered the practice of neurosurgery with his introduction of the microscope to brain surgery in the 1950s.