A physician who recently trained in neurosurgery at the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Hospital has been named a White House Fellow for 2012-13.

Anand Veeravagu, who earned an M.D. from Stanford Medical School and has been accepted to Stanford's Graduate School of Business, will spend the coming year in Washington D.C. working with Cabinet and White House officials and participating in seminars and policy trips with 14 other White House Fellows.

Veeravagu most recently served as chief neurosurgery resident at the VA, caring for soldiers with traumatic brain and spinal cord injuries, with a focus on minimally invasive diagnostic and surgical techniques for diseases of the central nervous system.

In 2006 he developed a radiotherapeutic to treat a form of malignant brain tumor. He has published more than 50 scientific manuscripts and written for the Huffington Post. He worked at the CURE Children's Hospital of Uganda, which specializes in neurosurgery, in 2011. He helped organize medical relief missions following the 2004 tsunami. He has received more than 30 awards for leadership, research and promotion of health-care access to underserved populations.

He is an honors graduate of Johns Hopkins University, with a B.S. in biomedical engineering and a minor in multicultural and regional studies.

President Lyndon B. Johnson established the White House Fellows Program in 1964 to give promising American leaders "first hand, high-level experience with the workings of the federal government and to increase their sense of participation in national affairs."

— Palo Alto Weekly staff

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