Patrick Purdon, Ph.D.

Patrick Purdon attended Chula Vista High School from 1988-1991. During this time he won a Grand Sweepstakes Award at the 1991 Greater San Diego Science and Engineering Fair and represented San Diego County at the International Science and Engineering Fair. He was a top 40 Finalist at the Westinghouse Science Talent Search in 1992.

Currently, Dr. Purdon is an Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School and an Associate Bioengineer at Massachusetts General Hospital. He is the Associate Director of the Neuroscience Statistics Research Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital. He received his A.B. in Engineering Sciences, summa cum laude, from Harvard College in 1996, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from MIT in 2005. He is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and is a recipient of the prestigious National Institutes of Health Directors New Innovator Award, the only researcher within the field of anesthesiology to have received this award. Dr. Purdon has made fundamental contributions to the systems-level neural mechanisms of anesthesia, establishing in humans the relationship between anesthesia-induced changes in neuronal activity and electroencephalogram signatures that can be used to monitor general anesthesia and sedation. Dr. Purdon is also a leading researcher in biomedical engineering, and has made important advances in multimodal functional neuroimaging and biomedical signal processing. He has published more than 75 peer-reviewed papers on these topics. Dr. Purdon is translating his research insights to improve patient care in the operating room and intensive care unit, with 14 patents pending on technologies to monitor and control brain function during anesthesia and sedation, and numerous industry collaborations. Dr. Purdon is also deeply involved in clinical education, teaching anesthesiologists the basic science and clinical neurophysiology of general anesthesia and sedation, most recently through his online education website, AnesthesiaEEG.com.