Hazem S. Ghaith, MD

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Neurological Surgery at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland, Oregon. I received my medical degree (MBBCh) from Al-Azhar University, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo, Egypt.

My interest in neuroscience and neurosurgery started during medical school. I became drawn to how complex cognitive abilities like language, numerical cognition, and decision-making emerge from distributed cortical networks, and how conditions such as epilepsy and brain tumors can disrupt these networks and impair function.

During medical school, I collaborated on several neuroendovascular research projects, which provided early research experience and exposure to cerebrovascular disease. I also got involved in functional neurosurgery research, spending time in the OR during awake cases, and realized how much could be learned from recording cortical activity in real time.

After graduating, I joined OHSU as a postdoc in the Neurological Surgery Department. My research uses electrocorticography (ECoG) during awake tumor and epilepsy surgeries, along with stereo-EEG from epilepsy monitoring units. I’m particularly interested in how brain tumors and epilepsy reshape functional networks—how the cortex reorganizes around a lesion, and what that means for preserving language or other abilities during resection.

My work sits at the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, neuro-oncology, and connectivity analysis. I focus on number and language processing and how these two domains interact, and I use structural and functional connectivity to understand how tumors alter network organization and to inform surgical planning.