Matthew Gutman

Matthew Gutman is a neurosurgeon who witnesses the suffering that can be caused by both children and adults living with epilepsy and brain tumours, and believes in advancing the field to facilitate stereotactic treatment options to help identify, and ultimately cure patients suffering from these conditions.

Matthew is a fellow of the Royal Australian College of Surgeons (Neurosurgery) and holds a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery with honours from Monash University. He has performed additional sub-specialized training and voluntary work at The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (Queen’s Square, London), Cambridge University Hospital and Mbale, Uganda.

As the head of the Epilepsy Surgery Program at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Matthew is involved in leading one of the largest epilepsy and brain tumour programs in Australia. One of the unique challenges the program faces is learning to treat epilepsy and brain tumours in deep and eloquent parts of the brain, in which open surgery could be dangerous and is thus avoided.

Matthew’s Churchill Fellowship will enable him to study novel ways to safely treat and lesion deep inside the brain, and to develop a safe working algorithm to treat epilepsy and brain tumours that are currently unable to be safely treated via alternative methods including traditional surgery.

Matthew is passionate about epilepsy surgery, as it is one of the few areas of neurosurgery where patients can be cured, dramatically and permanently changing their lives. This process involves multi-disciplinary collaboration and problem solving with neurologists, neurophysiologists, radiologists, and nurses, to each lend a specialized skillset to solve a complex problem which ultimately transforms the patient’s life.