James P. (Pat) McAllister II, PhD, a member of the Hydrocephalus Association’s Medical Advisory Board, has been named the 2005 recipient of the Robert H. Pudenz Award for Excellence in Cerebrospinal Fluid Physiology. This award, presented annually since 1989by Medtronic NT, is named in honor of Robert H. Pudenz, who was a recognized pioneer in the field of pediatric neurosurgery, research in cerebrospinal fluid physiology and cerebrospinal fluid shunt technology for the treatment of hydrocephalus.

    Dr. McAllister was honored in October at a ceremony in Detroit, where he is a professor and the director of neurosurgical research at Wayne State University School of Medicine. In attendance at the ceremony were Dory Kranz, executive director of the Hydrocephalus Association; Association Board of Directors member Ralph Kistler; Marion L. (Jack) Walker, MD, a longtime member of the Association’s Medical Advisory Board; and representatives from Medtronic NT, including Tommy Johns (vice president and general manager), Leanne Lintula (product manager), Ken Wagner (director of marketing), Chris Cerritos (sales representative) and Michael Pollay, MD (medical director). A$7,500 cash grant will be given to Wayne State University’s department of neurosurgery to fund basic research on hydrocephalus and cerebrospinal fluid physiology; the award also includes a $1,000cash grant to the Hydrocephalus Association in honor of Dr. McAllister.

     Dr. McAllister has spent almost his entire career involved in the field of experimental and clinical hydrocephalus research. I met him in 1985, when he attended his first meeting of pediatric neurosurgeons and I was hosting the Hydrocephalus Association’s exhibit table. Neither of us was getting a lot of attention, and in Dr. McAllister’s words,” we bonded together in our loneliness and our search for financial support”: mine for patient educational materials and his for research funding.

    His distinguished career has been guided by the principle of active participation, which he learned during his early, and sometimes frustrating, days in research. And nowhere has this philosophy been more evident than in his involvement in last year’s NIH-sponsored hydrocephalus research conference in Baltimore, where he passionately took on a leadership role. Dr. McAllister likes to say that he’s not the smartest scientist in hydrocephalus research, but he has desire on his side. We can’t comment on the IQ part, but we do know that few have devoted as much blood, sweat and tears to furthering our understanding of hydrocephalus as he has.

    On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Medical Advisory Board of the Hydrocephalus Association, we salute Dr. McAllister—a brilliant, passionate and committed scientist. In accepting the Pudenz award, he promised, “I will not slow down—not stop participating—for the rest of my life.” How very fortunate for our community.