Michael R. Chicoine, MD

Michael R. Chicoine, MD, the August A. Busch Jr. Professor of Neurological Surgery, is recognized for his exemplary dedication to providing outstanding and compassionate medical care.

Chicoine is considered an international expert in skull base surgery and novel applications for high field strength intraoperativemagnetic resonance imaging (MRI), a technology that allows surgeons to acquire MRI images in the operating room to assess surgical progress in real time.

As a surgeon, colleagues and trainees describe him as sensitive, compassionate, unflappable, tireless, careful and highly skilled. Residents consider him an outstanding role model who sets the bar extremely high; he is most outstanding, they say, in the empathy, courtesy and calming effect he shows his patients as he counsels them about serious neurological illnesses.

Chicoine’s research focuses on understanding many aspects of brain tumor biology, the assessment of the effect of tumor growth on brain function, and development of novel therapeutics for gliomas. He leads Washington University’s research efforts in the implementation and evaluation of intraoperative MRI and co-chaired an international conference on the subject at Washington University last year.

He has been honored three times by Washington University medical students as Clinical Teacher of the Year and has been listed in Best Doctor’s Inc.’s Best Doctors since 2006. Chicoine received his bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Illinois, Champaign, in 1985 and his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1990. He completed his medical  raining with an internship, residency and chief residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University and a skull base neurosurgery fellowship at the University of Cincinnati. He joined the Washington University faculty in 1998 and received his endowed professorship in 2011. He is currently an associate professor.