Quyen T. Nguyen, MD, PhD

Quyen Nguyen, MD, PhD, has committed her career to making surgery safer. A practicing head-and-neck surgeon with subspecialty board certification in Otology and Neurotology, she saw the devastating impact that nerve damage during surgery has on people’s lives. Alongside her late mentor and Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Roger Tsien, Dr. Nguyen invented a drug to make nerves glow during surgery to help surgeons  see them more clearly, thereby avoiding inadvertent injury and leading to better patient outcomes. Based on this technology, she founded Alume Bioscience and is working to make this drug a reality, reinventing the paradigm in surgical safety.

Dr. Nguyen is a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and Pharmacology at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), supporting the next generation of surgeons. She cares for tertiary referral patients at UCSD Health Systems addressing diseases of the facial nerve, ear and skull base with a specialization in hearing restoration surgeries including cochlear implantation.

 In 2014, Dr. Nguyen was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government for outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers.