Dr. Bernardo received an MD from University of Naples “Federico II” where he graduated Summa cum Laude. He completed his Neurosurgery residency at the Western General Hospital/University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland. Dr Bernardo has served as scholar at the University of California, Irvine from 1997 to 1999. He spent one year in 1999 as a volunteer neurosurgeon in Peru where he established skull base surgery programs in hospitals throughout the country, representing the Foundation for International Education in Neurosurgery (F.I.E.N.S.). In 2000 he became adjunct Professor of Neurosurgery and Director of the Microneurosurgery Skull Base Laboratory at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. After a fellowship in “skull base surgery” at the Barrow’s Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona under Dr. Robert Spetzler, he joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell Medical College as Professor and Director of the Skull Base Surgery Laboratory. The Skull Base Laboratory is a state of the art facility where neurosurgical fellows are trained from all over the world under Dr Bernardo’s supervision. The laboratory integrates exquisite cadaveric dissections, 3-D visualization, virtual reality, and computerized simulation for training of surgical procedures and visuospatial skills and to investigate new surgical routes to access intracranial targets. Dr Bernardo has established himself as a pioneer and eminent expert in the understanding of microsurgical anatomy applied to skull base surgery. At the Barrow he developed a three-dimensional surgical simulator to teach surgeons the visual-spatial skills required to perform skull base surgical approaches. The project is called interactive virtual dissection (IVD) and integrates cadaveric dissections, 3-D visualization, virtual reality, and computerized simulation for training of surgical procedures. Dr Bernardo has been invited to direct over 150 surgical courses in the United States and in many different countries and is frequently invited as guest and honored speaker at many international neurosurgical meetings throughout the world. He has trained over 5,000 neurosurgeons in his skull base surgery courses around the world and 90 international fellows since he has joined the Department of Neurosurgery at Weill Cornell. He has established medical corporate consulting relationships in the United States and is currently international neurosurgical consultant in several countries where he continues to operate on complex skull base surgical cases on a routine basis. His fields of interest are skull base surgery, cerebrovascular surgery and virtual reality in medicine. He is an active member of the Italian Association of Neurosurgeons, the Register of Neurosurgeons of the United Kingdom, The American Congress of Neurosurgeons, and honorary member of the Peruvian Association of Neurological Surgeons, of the Peruvian Academy of Surgery, the Colombian Association of Neurological Surgeons, the Caribbean Association of Neurological Surgeons, and the Venezuelan Association of Neurological Surgeons.