(MNH) at McGill University Health Centre (2019) After graduation, Del Maestro completed five years of
junior medical training and neurosurgical residency. In 1979, he received his Ph.D. in the subject of
biochemistry from the
University of Uppsala, Sweden, where he focused on mechanisms of
free radical injury in the
small blood vessels. In 2006 he authored a book titled
A History of Neuro-Oncology. Del Maestro has been involved in simulating real brain surgery by creating virtual reality scenarios, founded upon the principles of
flight simulation. In 2020, this was demonstrated in a study published in
The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study evaluated how well medical students and surgeons performed in such a setting. The idea came after observing the reduction in fatal aircraft accidents following the global use of
simulation in the aviation industry. The adapted simulator, "NeuroVR", developed with the
National Research Council of Canada (NRC), allows neurosurgeons to practice brain surgery. He explained how his team “took tumours out and measured their density and then put all that information into the simulator” ... and ... “took colour and put that into the simulator, the way the blood vessels bleed”. The simulator is then able to determine whether the operator is junior or more of an expert, he stated in an interview about the research. ==Other roles==