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St. Louis, MO
United States

Elected: 1998

Richard Donald Bucholz was born on July 11, 1952 in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Dr. Donald J. Bucholz, a prominent internist, and Frances Seiler Bucholz, a local leader in social services. He attended the Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire from 1966 to 1970, and graduated cum laude. He attended Yale College, receiving a bachelor in science cum laude in molecular biochemistry and biophysics in 1973. He continued at Yale for his medical education, graduating in 1977, and completed a general surgical internship at Yale New Haven Medical Center before neurosurgical training under Drs. William Collins from 1978 to 1983. He was an Instructor at Yale in 1982-083 before accepting a position of assistant professor at St. Louis University School of Medicine under Dr. Kenneth R. Smith, Junior. He was certified by the American Board of Neurological Surgery in 1985, was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1991, and became a full professor in 1996.

His life long fascination with electronics and computers led to an early interest in neurosurgery, and is reflected in his clinical and research activities which focus on the application of computers in the performance of surgery. He fabricated a neurosurgical navigational system in his home workshop in 1990 which, following further development with Kurt Smith, DSc, eventually became the StealthStation. His first patent on the system was filed in 1990 and issue in 1996, and an additional eight patents, having to do with correction of tissue shift during surgery and alternative techniques for image registration, have been granted. Other patents describing the design of intraoperative computer networks and proton beam therapy are pending. He was named the director of the Jean Bakewell Section of Image Guided Surgery upon its formation in 1996. At the same time, in collaboration with another member of the faculty, Dr. Jaimie Henderson, The Journal of Image Guided Surgery was created and published by John Wiley and Sons of New York, which was the first medical journal to appear in both printed and web based electronic formats, and remains the only journal to conduct peer review over the Internet. In 1997 he was as co-founder of the International Society of Computer Aided Surgery, and the Journal was renamed Computer Aided Surgery, becoming the official publication of that society. Subsequently the journal has become the official journal of Computer Aided Orthopedic Surgery International. Reflecting his interests in engineering, Dr. Bucholz is a member of the World Academy of Biomedical Technologies, the International Society for Optic Engineering, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has been awarded the James B. Eads Award for innovation in engineering and technology by the Academy of Science of Saint Louis. Currently, his laboratory is pursuing the realtime intraoperative delivery of information via navigational systems, and an online dissection atlas as an initial demonstration of this technology.

Clinically, Dr. Bucholz specializes in cranial surgery, specifically neuro-oncology, epilepsy surgery, and sterotactic radiosurgery. He holds a clinical appointment at Washington University School of Medicine and is on the medical advisory board for the gamma knife facility at that institution. His clinical research covers automated segmentation of three dimensional diagnostic imaging, alternative therapeutic interventions such as drug infusion for glioblastoma multiforme and electrical stimulation for the management of depression, and application of sterotactic radiosurgery to extracranial lesions.

Dr. Bucholz is a member of several medical societies, including the American Association of Neurological Surgery, the congress of Neurological Surgery, the Southern Neurosurgical Society, the Yale Surgical Society, and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He serves as an AANS appointee to the Joint Council of State Neurosurgical Societies, on the Education Committee of the CNS, and is a member of the sterotactic, spine, and tumor sections of the AANS. He is editor in chief of Computer Aided Surgery, on the editorial board of the Journal of Radiosurgery, and reviews articles for several medical and engineering publications. He serves on the scientific advisory board of several corporations, as well as on the board of directors of the American Society for Sterotactic and Functional Neurosurgery. He has been a director and faculty member of several courses on image guided surgery for both physicians and engineers, and is the author of several papers and book chapters in the field.

In 1975 he married a fellow singer in the Yale Glee Club, Kathleen Keenan Bucholz, Ph.D., who is now a Research Association Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Washington University. They live in the city of St. Louis with their three children, Elizabeth Kathleen, Eleanor Ingrid, and Ethan Richard Bucholz.