Professor and W. Eugene Stern Chair

Chair & Executive Medical Director, Department of Neurosurgery

David Geffen School of Medicine & UCLA Health Dr. Linda M. Liau is Professor and W. Eugene Stern Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.  She is Co-Director of the UCLA Brain Tumor Center, and Principal Investigator and Director of the NCI-designated UCLA Brain Tumor SPORE (Specialized Program of Research Excellence).  She served as a Board Director of the American Board of Neurological Surgery (2014 – 2020) and was the first woman Chair of the ABNS (2019-2020).  She was also the first woman President of the Western Neurosurgical Society (WNS).  Dr. Liau has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the past 25 years.  She has been the mentor of several NIH training grants for residents, fellows, and postdoctoral researchers in her laboratory. Her research interests include translational experimental therapeutics of cell-based immunotherapy for brain tumors and the characterization of biomarkers of response to immune-based therapies.  She is internationally recognized for her achievements in understanding the immunobiology of malignant brain tumors and pioneering the use of dendritic cell-based vaccines for glioblastoma.  Dr. Liau has authored over 230 peer-reviewed research articles, along with several book chapters, and a textbook entitled Brain Tumor Immunotherapy.  She is on the editorial boards of several scientific/medical journals and was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Neuro-Oncology (2007–2018).  In 2018, she was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM).