CHOC Children’s Tuesday announced the appointment of physician and research scientist Dr. Terence Sanger as the hospital’s vice president for research and chief scientific officer.
Sanger, who has decades of experience in pediatric neurology, movement disorders and robotics, joins CHOC from the University of Southern California, where he served as provost professor in the departments of biomedical engineering, neurology and biokinesiology.
He was also an attending neurologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where he was headed the pediatric movement disorders program and was the founding director of the health technology and engineering program.
Previously, he was a tenured professor of child neurology at Stanford University and on the medical staff at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital.
“Dr. Sanger brings a unique background in pediatric neurology, electrical engineering and computational neuroscience to CHOC’s Research Institute,” said Kimberly Chavalas Cripe, CHOC Children’s president and CEO.
“As a health system, CHOC has long been committed to pediatric research — not simply for the purposes of furthering knowledge and understanding, but for improving the top-quality care we provide to children. Dr. Sanger’s leadership will catapult these efforts exponentially,” Cripe said.
Sanger will be responsible for accelerating CHOC’s research efforts. He will also oversee research operations and serve as CHOC’s institutional official for research, with responsibility for ensuring the health, safety and responsible conduct of research at the health system.
Sanger will also join CHOC’s medical staff and be vice chair for research in the department of pediatrics at UC Irvine.
Sanger received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University, and a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his medical internship and residency training in pediatrics at County-USC Medical Center. Sanger completed residency and fellowship training in neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital, and did additional fellowship training in the movement disorders unit at Toronto Western Hospital.
In addition to his clinical fellowships, Sanger completed research fellowship training at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena and at MIT.