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    John Rolston, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor
    Mass General Brigham

    Dr. John Rolston is a neurosurgeon-scientist at Mass General Brigham / Harvard Medical School recognized internationally for advancing epilepsy and movement-disorder surgery. He directs both Epilepsy Surgery and the Laboratory for Mapping & Engineering Neural Dynamics at Mass General Brigham.

    Dr. Rolston earned a B.A. from Columbia University, winning the Russell Mills Award for Excellence in Computer Science. He completed his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech and Emory University, where he built one of the first brain-computer interfaces for epilepsy, followed by an M.D. at Emory. His neurosurgery residency and post-doctoral fellowship were at the University of California, San Francisco.

    Backed by NIH funding, his lab develops neural-engineering tools to map—and rewire—the diseased brain, with applications to epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and psychiatric illness. A committed champion of patient safety, he has led landmark studies on neurosurgical errors and complications. Dr. Rolston has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and earned numerous honors, including UCSF’s Harold Rosegay Teaching Award and the Congress of Neurological Surgeons’ Basic Science Award for Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery.

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