Dr. Kalkanis is professor and chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, and co-director of the Neuroscience Institute at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan, where he also serves as Medical Director of the Henry Ford Cancer Institute (HFCI). The newly formed HFCI, under the leadership of Dr. Kalkanis, has grown to a $1.3 billion enterprise with 1425 employees treating more than 8,000 new cancer patients and over 100,000 patient visits each year across all five Henry Ford sites – one of the largest cancer centers in the country. Dr. Kalkanis and his team also spearheaded one of the country’s most comprehensive precision medicine and molecular tumor board programs for all cancer types.

Dr. Kalkanis joined Henry Ford in 2004 after completing his neurosurgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital. He graduated with highest honors from Harvard University, where he was awarded the John Harvard Scholarship, and then Harvard Medical School, where he served as class marshal and received the Linnane Prize for highest academic achievement.

In 2009, Dr. Kalkanis led a multidisciplinary team of experts to publish the first and largest set of guidelines to date in organized neurosurgery on the clinical treatment pathways for metastatic brain tumors. Since that time, he has chaired the guidelines efforts of the Joint Section on Tumors and was the founding chair of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons (CNS) Guidelines Committee, where he helped to spearhead ten separate clinical practice guidelines in a myriad of neurosurgical topics.

Dr. Kalkanis has served on the Executive Committee of the CNS since 2009, and was recently elected as President of the CNS. He also serves as the immediate Past-Chair for the Section on Tumors of the CNS and American Association of Neurological Surgeons, and he is a past president of the Michigan Association of Neurological Surgeons. In 2018, Dr. Kalkanis was chosen to receive one of the profession’s highest honors in being named a Director of the American Board of Neurological Surgery, the accrediting and credentialing body for all neurosurgeons in the United States.

With the goal of refining future personalized medicine treatment protocols, and as the Mark Rosenblum Endowed Chair in Neurosurgery, Dr. Kalkanis runs a funded translational research laboratory investigating the molecular genetic differences between short-and long-term glioma survivors. Specializing in brain tumor surgery, he has been involved in numerous clinical trials for brain tumors and has authored over 150 peer reviewed publications.

Steve and his wife, Laurel, especially enjoy traveling with and cheering on their three children, Nicholas, Connor and Grace, in multiple sporting, scouting and musical activities.