Alum pursues medical career in robotic assisted surgery
Ibardo Zambrano ’06 is a urologist at Novant Health, a four-state integrated network of physician clinics, outpatient centers, and hospitals. His expertise is in oncology and robotic-assisted techniques for minimally invasive surgery, specializing in bladder, kidney, and prostate cancers, as well as urinary tract and reproductive system disorders.
Zambrano, a native of Colombia, majored in neuroscience at Skidmore. He moved to Jackson
Heights in Queens, N.Y., at age 16 to seek better educational opportunities without
knowing any English. Even as a young boy, Zambrano gravitated toward science and medicine.
Through Skidmore’s Opportunity Program, he studied at the College on a full scholarship.
“Neuroscience was a superb choice for a major given its highly multidisciplinary curriculum, ranging from molecular and developmental biopsy to genetics, physics, computer science, and psychology,” Zambrano says. “Skidmore already had a very robust program at the time, and it was in a great location, so it was a natural choice for me.”
He spent his first summer at Skidmore in a neuroscience lab and would eventually conduct research for the National Institutes of Health as an Undergraduate Scholarship Program recipient. The award offers scholarship money and summer research internships, which are followed by a yearlong commitment to conduct research as a post-baccalaureate or post-graduate student.
For two years, as a post-baccalaureate student, Zambrano worked in an NIH neurogenetics lab studying protein-to-protein interactions of key genes involved in familial Parkinson’s disease, which resulted in several publications. He went on to earn his medical degree at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, where he decided to pursue urology.
“Out of all the surgical subspecialties taking care of both male and female cancer patients, urology combines multiple open and minimally invasive techniques and has always been at the forefront of surgical innovation and technology,” he says.
Before joining Novant Health, Zambrano worked in the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina and completed a urologic oncology fellowship. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
