This content was provided by Dr. Wharen Jr "Dr. Robert Wharen is a Professor of Neurosurgery in the Department of Neurosurgery at Mayo Clinic Florida. He completed his residency training at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in 1985, which also included six months of chief resident training at Emory in Atlanta, Georgia. Following completion of residency, he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh under Dr. Peter Janetta and Dr. Robert Selker from July, 1985 through October, 1986. Since the establishment of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida in October, 1986 until July of 2016, he served as Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery. During this tenure, the neurosurgery department grew from two to ten neurosurgeons performing over 2000 major neurosurgical cases per year. He helped to establish a new neurosurgery residency program in 2012 at Mayo Clinic Florida, and served as the Program Director from 2012 to 2015 and the Assistant Program Director from 2015-17. In 2016, the residency program received a $10 Million endowment from John and Carolyn Sonnentag in gratitude for the neurosurgical treatment by Dr. Wharen. His areas of expertise are in functional neurosurgery, brain tumors and skull base surgery, and neurosurgical procedures for pain. He has been involved with clinical and/or basic research in Parkinson's Disease, essential tremor, dystonia, gliomas, hydrocephalus, epilepsy, pituitary tumors, dysesthetic pain, trigeminal neuralgia, lumbar stenosis, acoustic tumors, and arteriovenous malformations. Along with Dr. Ryan Uitti, a movement disorder neurologist, Mayo Clinic Florida has been a leading academic center in functional neurosurgery and deep brain stimulation. He holds two patents for inventions related to deep brain stimulation, and over the past 30 years has performed over 2000 functional neurosurgical procedures. Dr. Wharen has served as President of the Southern Neurosurgery Society, Vice-President of the Neurosurgery Society of America, and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons representative to ASTM International (formerly the American Standards for Testing and Materials) where he was involved in the development of industry standards for shunts and aneurysm clips."