Dr. Church graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University with degrees in psychology and music composition. He earned his medical doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania where he was a Twenty-first Century Scholar. He completed his neurological surgery residency at Penn State Health where he also completed a neuroendovascular fellowship in 2016. He was neurosurgery registrar at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, Australia 2016-17 and chief resident at Penn State 2017-18. In 2018-19 he was cerebrovascular neurosurgery fellow at Stanford Medicine where he developed extensive experience with open approaches for cerebrovascular disease including direct bypass for complex aneurysm and moyamoya disease. Dr. Church is currently cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgeon, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, Neurology, and Radiology, and Director of Cerebrovascular Microsurgery at Penn State Health where he also serves as a medical director. He is Fellow of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, and has been awarded Recognition of Focused Practice in Neuroendovascular Surgery. His clinical and research interests include cerebral bypass, moyamoya disease, cerebral aneurysm treatment, as well as evidence based medicine, neurosurgical registry science, and medical ethics. He was bioethics fellow at Harvard Medical School in 2025 and is currently completing graduate work in ethics at the University of Oxford. His ethics interests include surgical ethics, neuroethics, beginning and end life ethics, and his work focuses on ethical perspectives on optimizing life flourishing. Dr. Church has ongoing grant funded research in cerebral aneurysm treatment, cerebral bypass, registry science, and medical ethics. He has over 50 publications with more than 2000 citations, as well as numerous awards including Phi Beta Kappa 2003 and Alpha Omega Alpha 2013. He serves as an elder at Hershey Presbyterian Church (PCA). He is married to Emily Church, and they have 5 children.

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