Scott Shapiro was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, February 8, 1955. He was the first of two children born to Jone and Dr. Burton J. Shapiro. In 1958, the family moved to Cleveland, Ohio for his father to train in Ophthalmology at the Cleveland Clinic. In 1960, they moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where his father set up practice and served as a clinical professor of Ophthalmology at the Indiana University Medical Center.

Dr. Shapiro became an eagle scout and subsequently graduated from North Central High School in 1973 and attended the University of Illinois. He graduated with a degree in physiology with additional minors in chemistry and physics. While in college he did animal research on the hypothalamic/hypophysical portal system and worked in the Nobel prize wining low temperature laboratory of Dr. John Bardeen as a graduate with honors and entered the Indiana University Medical School fully intending to become a neurosurgeon.

Dr. Shapiro married his college sweetheart Linda Rose Glickman in 1978. He graduated in 1981 and entered the Indiana University Residency training program immediately upon graduation. During the first five years of his training they had a son Adam in 1982, and a daughter Allissa in 1986. While a resident, Dr. Shapiro spent his laboratory time and free time pursuing studies on the neurochemistry of experimental spinal cord injury in a canine model that lead to a number of publications. Dr. Shapiro always intended to stay on as a professor at IU and became an Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery starting the day after completion of his residency and took over the program directorship. Unfortunately, Linda developed a breast cancer while pregnant and this lead to her untimely death at age 34 despite a heroic bone marrow transplant at Duke. Dr. Shapiro found his children and neurosurgery to be his salvation. Dr. Shapiro has been very involved in clinical and basic research and published in areas of spinal cord injury, spinal fusion, aneurysm surgery and cerebrovascular disease and brain tumors.

Dr. Shapiro luckily found the wonderful Colleen Marie McCarthy whom he married in 1992. She adopted his children and things have never been better.

Dr. Shapiro is Professor of Neurosurgery at Indiana University and Resident Director under the Chair of Dr. Paul Nelson. Both Paul and Scott ran the 100th Boston Marathon together in 1996. Later that year, Scott operated on a much younger athlete, removing two cerebral metastases from Lance Armstrong. After winning the tour de France, Lance published a best selling book about his medical experiences and Scott is tickled pink to be included.

Subsequently, Dr. Shapiro had the pleasure of serving as program director under the chairmanship of Dr. Nick Barbaro from 2012 until 2019. We had the great pleasure of hosting the 2016 Society of Neurological Surgery annual meeting. In 2019, Dr. Barbaro stepped down as chairman. Now, in 2019 Dr. Shapiro has the pleasure of serving in his 33rd year as program director for the Indiana University Neurosurgical Residency for the new Chair Dr. Shelly Timmons. Great things are in store as we bring back the first dual trained endovascular/cerebrovascular resident that we trained to head up our cerebrovascular team. Over the 33 years, the neurosurgery residency has grown from 8 residents to 18 residents. It is our goal to grow our faculty, residency and research for the future of neurosurgery.