No stranger to academic excellence, Dr. Arvind Bhateja gained accolades throughout his student days with gold medals from M S Ramaiah Medical College, the Indian Society of Otolaryngologists in ENT, and Bangalore University. During the course of his MS in General Surgery at Seth GS Medical College and KEM Hospital in Mumbai, he performed and assisted in over 1500 general surgeries. This laid the foundation of his surgical prowess, as he went on to do his MCh in Neurosurgery at NIMHANS. Dr Bhateja takes a special interest in minimally invasive neurosurgery and spine surgery, trans-sphenoidal endoscopic approaches, disc replacement, spinal fusions and skull-base approaches to neurosurgery. He specialises in the endoscopic endonasal approach to pituitary tumors, microvascular decompression, craniovertebral junction anomalies, vestibular schwannomas / acoustic neuroma surgery, awake craniotomy, intra-operative neuromonitoring, intraoperative fluorescence-guided tumor resection, spondylolisthesis and minimally invasive TLIF. To date, he has performed more than three thousand neurosurgical procedures. In recognition of his accomplishments and expertise, he was recognised as a ‘Leading Spine Surgeon’ at the India Spine Vision 2007 Conference (New Delhi, 2006) and has also been awarded the ‘Rashtriya Rattan Award’ by the Global Economic Council (Bangalore, April 2007).