ATHENS, Ga. — Dr. Robert Townsend, a specialist in neuroendovascular surgery, is joining Georgia Neurological Surgery and Comprehensive Spine (GNS) and will begin seeing patients in early September.

A board-certified neurosurgical specialist, Townsend practices general neurosurgery and spine surgery. He is certified in endovascular treatments such as mechanical thrombectomy and aneurysm coiling for emergency stroke treatment. He is skilled in the full breadth of minimally invasive and open spinal techniques, including robotic procedures, and is especially interested in providing team-based, empathetic patient care.

Townsend graduated from Furman University in Greenville, S.C., with a bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience, then earned his medical degree at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, also in Greenville. He completed a seven-year neurological surgery residency and one-year neuroendovascular fellowship at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC.

His professional experience includes serving as a teaching assistant in cell biology at Furman and in anatomy and neuroanatomy at USC School of Medicine, as well as serving as a co-investigator at the Spinal Cord Injury Outcomes Improvement Lab at Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

He is a member of the Southern Neurosurgical Society, the Congress of Neurological Surgeons, the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery, and the American Association of Neurological Surgeons. In received the 2019 Neurocritical Care Research Award from the Wake Forest Department of NeuroCritical Care.

Dr. Townsend is an avid road and trail runner who loves hiking and watersports with his family. In addition, he describes himself as a “poor but enthusiastic golfer.”