Dr. Duhaime served as Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital until May 2021 and is the Nicholas T. Zervas Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School. She has been a practicing board-certified pediatric neurosurgeon for three decades, with experience in all aspects of pediatric neurosurgical practice including acute trauma, hydrocephalus and brain cysts, Chiari malformations, surgical treatment of epilepsy, craniofacial conditions, brain tumors, congenital spinal cord disorders, and spasticity. She also serves as a consultant for the Child Protection Team at Mass General. She has served on the American Board of Pediatric Neurological Surgery and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Neurosurgery.
Her neuroscience research focuses on the mechanisms, pathophysiology, imaging, and treatment of injury in the immature brain, using translational and clinical research to study injuries occurring in infants and young children, including those seen most commonly in child abuse. The work also investigates plasticity, recovery, and return of function in children and adolescents of different ages.
Dr. Duhaime has a longstanding interest in the relationship between brain and behavior, and in environmental issues. She is a Faculty Associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. In 2016 she spent a year as a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University where she studied the neurobiology of reward circuitry and its relevance to pro-environmental behavior. She has collaborated on designing a prototype advanced "green" biophilic pediatric hospital. She serves as an Associate Director of the Mass General Center for the Environment and Health, and also is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Climate Change and Health.