Taylor Abel has been named chief of pediatric neurosurgery at UPMC

After a national search, UPMC tapped Taylor Abel, associate professor of neurological surgery and bioengineering, to be its next chief of pediatric neurosurgery.

Abel joined Pitt in 2018 and has dual appointments in the School of Medicine and Swanson School of Engineering. He is one of only a few U.S. neurosurgeons with specialty training in both pediatric neurosurgery and epilepsy surgery.

“Dr. Abel is a leading neurosurgeon-scientist, with NIH funding, who has and will continue improve what we can do for children with complex neurosurgical disorders,” said Robert Friedlander, Walter E. Dandy Distinguished Professor and chair of Pitt’s Department of Neurological Surgery and co-director of the UPMC Neurological Institute.

At UPMC, Abel cares for children with drug-resistant epilepsy and movement disorders and co-directs the Pediatric Epilepsy Surgery Program. His research focuses on improving pediatric epilepsy surgery and understanding how the brain perceives voice and speech.

“It is a huge honor and responsibility to take on this role at our children’s hospital, which has been a bastion of academic pediatric neurosurgery and the origin of so many advances in our field,” said Abel. “Looking forward to the next 20 years of pediatric neurosurgery, we need to leverage advancements in neuromodulation, data science and neuroimaging to bring in new treatments for children with epilepsy, movement disorders, paralysis, brain tumors and traumatic brain injury.”

Abel took over as chief on Feb. 1 from Ian Pollack, who served for 20 years. Pollack will remain a part of the department, seeing patients at UPMC and continuing his research on childhood brain tumors at Pitt.