Speakers

Teo received an AB Columbia, and an MD and MPH from Johns Hopkins. He trained in neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Guy’s, Maudsley and King’s College Hospitals Neurosurgical Unit in London. He was appointed the Neuroresearch Foundation Fellow, and then the Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Fellow at Harvard University. Teo also received an MBA with distinction from Wharton and was awarded a DMedSc (Honoris Causae) from Queen’s University for contributions to medicine and public service.

After completing his neurosurgical training, Teo worked in the Laboratory of Cerebral Metabolism at the NIH on the development of PET scanning, and developed the skull base and functional program at Georgetown. During his military service, he developed field resuscitation protocols, served as a flight surgeon and combat neurosurgeon, and organized the US revision of the NATO handbook of War Surgery. For his work in developing mobile ICU systems and other contributions to critical care in mass casualty settings, he was elected to Fellowship in the College of Critical Care Medicine, the first neurosurgeon so honoured. He was appointed medical consultant to the Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress, then Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Administrative Conference of the United States and subsequently Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defence for Health Affairs and consultant to the FDA in neurological drugs and devices.

In 1997, Teo established a small venture capital fund to support early stage university-based biomedical spin-outs in the southeast, which ultimately yielded over $4 billion in portfolio value. He was recruited to the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he developed the first curriculum in translational and biomedical science. He became an advisor to a number of universities looking to institute programs in translational medicine. At the invitation of the British Government, he chaired the International Advisory Panel for Biotechnology for Northern Ireland. He was appointed to the US-Israel Science and Technology Commission of the US Department of Commerce, and helped establish the Israel Life Sciences Association. Later he served as an advisor in new technology support and commercialization to the Director of the NIH and the Office of Biodefense Research Affairs of the Division of Microbiology and Infections disease of NIAID. He has also advised the governments of Denmark and Norway in biomedical ventures, as well as financial institutions such as the Royal Bank of Canada.

In 2002 Teo joined the faculty of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, and in 2007 he assumed the chairmanship of the School of Medicine in Northern Ireland, which has enjoyed a notable resurgence in the wake of the Troubles. The school is now one of the highest ranked in Europe and has been joined to the Russell 20 after expanding by 40%, and winning over £350 million in infrastructure support. As part of the Queen’s Jubilee Celebration of 2012, it received the St. James Prize from Queen Elizabeth for biomedical research.

Teo was named the Sir Thomas and Edith Dixon Medalist for 2012 and has just been awarded Fellowship in the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh ad hominem.

Teo has been a director of several privately held and publicly traded corporations. He teaches at Harvard Business School as well as Harvard Medical School, and at the Venture Capital Institute of the Venture Capital Association. He was appointed to the Board of Directors of the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Alumni Board of Advisors to the Wharton School and later the Board of the Goergen Entrepreneurship Institute of the University of Pennsylvania.

He chaired the Georgia Neurosurgical Society, served as director of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, chair of the AANS Ethics Committee and principle author of the AANS handbook of ethics. He now chairs the Committee on Perioperative Care for the American College of Surgeons, and serves as an officer and director of the Council on Surgical and Perioperative Safety and a director of the Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation.

Teo has authored or edited eight books and monographs, and over 200 chapters and articles. He is an editor of Neurosurgery, and the Journal of Clinical Ethics.

Teo lives in Newton, Massachusetts with his wife Linda, a paediatric ophthalmologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, and has three children. A mountain climber, he participated as the physician to a National Geographic Everest expedition. He is also a sailor, skier, and published photographer.