Charles Teo AM (b. 1957) is a neurosurgeon. Born in Sydney, where he attended Scots College and graduated in medicine and surgery from the University of New South Wales, he worked for some years at the Children’s Medical Center, Dallas, Texas and was Associate Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Arkansas. Developing a reputation in the field of minimally invasive (or ‘keyhole’) neurosurgery, he has been invited speaker and visiting professor in more than 35 countries, associated with such institutions as Johns Hopkins University, Stanford University, Albert Einstein University, Marbourg University and the Barrow Neurological Institute. He has written some thirty book chapters and scores of scholarly papers. While still teaching regularly in the USA, he also teaches and sponsors the education of neurosurgeons from developing countries such as Peru, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Romania, and treats children from developing countries with neurological conditions. Based at the Prince of Wales Private Hospital, he is currently the director of the Centre for Minimally Invasive Neurosurgery, president of Think First Australasia (established for the prevention of brain and spinal cord injuries), and a Founding Board Member of VINE (Volunteers for International Neurosurgical Education). He is the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board and founder of the Cure For Life Foundation; he is a councillor for animal rights body Voiceless. He has been featured on Australian Story five times, 60 Minutes, Good Medicine and Today Tonight, in stories about patients with brain tumours, judged inoperable by others, which he removed. As a media-aware, charismatic and outspoken surgeon whose patients have included several household names, he is not without detractors within his profession; yet he was recently named the Readers’ Digest Most Trusted Australian.
