PGAD/GPD Region 3 Webinar

Mrs. Goldstein is an AASECT Certified Sexuality Educator and an ACRP Certified Clinical Research Coordinator, as well as managing editor of Sexual Medicine Reviews. She works at San Diego Sexual Medicine to develop clinical research projects, write protocols and oversee clinical trials, as well as supervise educational programs and support trainees. Mrs. Goldstein’s passion is education and in addition to co-authoring When Sex Isn’t Good to provide education and empowerment to women with sexual dysfunction, she has served as Education Chair of ISSWSH and currently serves on the Global Development and Online Services Committees and Chairs the Industry Relations Committee for the International Society for Sexual Medicine. In addition, she develops programs for The Institute for Sexual Medicine, a charitable corporation dedicated to research and education in the field.

Dr. Rachel Rubin is a board-certified urologist and sexual medicine specialist. She is an assistant clinical professor of Urology at Georgetown University and works in a private practice in Washington, DC. She is one of only a handful of physicians fellowship trained in male and female sexual medicine. Dr. Rubin is a clinician, researcher, and vocal educator in the field of sexual medicine. She completed her medical and undergraduate training at Tufts University, her urology training at Georgetown University, and her fellowship training under Dr. Irwin Goldstein in San Diego. In addition to being ISSWSH Education chair, she also serves as Associate Editor for the journal Sexual Medicine Reviews.

Dr. Goldstein has been involved with sexual dysfunction research since the late 1970's. He has authored about 350 peer reviewed publications and multiple chapters, and edited 6 textbooks in the field. His interests include penile microvascular bypass surgery, surgery for dyspareunia, sexual health management post cancer treatment, genital dysesthesia/persistent genital arousal disorder, physiologic investigation of sexual function in men and women, and diagnosis and treatment of sexual dysfunction in men and women. Dr. Goldstein is Director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital, Clinical Professor of Surgery at University of California, San Diego and practices medicine at San Diego Sexual Medicine. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Sexual Medicine Reviews and past Editor of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. He is Immediate Past President of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health and a Past President of the Sexual Medicine Society of North America. He holds a degree in engineering from Brown University and received his medical degree from McGill University. The World Association for Sexual Health awarded the Gold Medal to Dr. Goldstein in 2009 in recognition of his lifelong contributions to the field, in 2012 he received the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health Award for Distinguished Service in Women’s Sexual Health, in 2013 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Sexual Medicine Society of North America, and in 2014 he received the ISSM Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Sexual Medicine. He is happily married to his college sweetheart Sue, and together they have three children and five grandchildren. 

Dr. Choll Kim graduated cum laude from Harvard Medical School and completed his fellowship training in complex spine surgery at the Mayo Clinic. In addition, he is double-board certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the American Board of Spine Surgery.

Dr. Kim is an internationally recognized expert in the field of computer-assisted minimally invasive spine surgery. He has trained and continues to train specialists throughout the country on the safe and effective application of state-of-the-art techniques using image guidance and navigation technologies.

Dr. Kim utilizes a broad range of minimally invasive treatments to effectively treat all aspects of complex spinal disorders, including herniated disks, spinal stenosis, adult scoliosis, spondylolisthesis, traumatic injuries, tumors, and infections throughout the entire spine from the neck to the low back. He is one of only a handful of surgeons in the world to master laser endoscopic spine surgery (LESS), a state-of-the-art minimally invasive procedure that effectively treats herniated disks, radiculopathy and sciatica. The LESS procedure can be performed under local anesthesia, in a same-day setting and with a small stab incision that is covered with a bandaid.

A leader in his field, Dr. Kim is the founder and past-president of the Society for Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery (SMISS), the founder of Minimally Invasive Spine Centers of Excellence (MIS-COE), the chair of the MIS Committee for the International Society for the Advancement of Spine Surgery (ISASS), the director of the Advanced Spine & Joint Institute at Alvarado Hospital and an associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego.

Furthermore, Dr. Kim is a Qualified Medical Evaluator and a past voting member of the FDA Orthopedic Devices Panel, which reviews all new spinal technologies. He has designed minimally invasive instrumentation used by surgeons around the world. Dr. Kim is an active member of the North American Spine Society (NASS) and the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS), and a fellow of the Scoliosis Research Society. Dr. Kim has over 200 publications and presentations.

Barry R. Komisaruk is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University-Newark, having graduated from the City University of New York in with a B.S. in Biology in 1961, from Rutgers University with a PhD in Psychobiology in 1965, and a Postdoctoral NIH fellowship in Neuroendocrinology at UCLA in 1966.

He has served as a Program Director at the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS), on the Psychobiology Review Panel at the National Science Foundation, and as Associate Editor on the Journal of Sexual Medicine and Sexual Medicine Reviews. His research firsts include identification of brain regions activated during orgasm in women, the role of the Vagus nerves in conveying genital sensation in women with severed spinal cord, the phenomenon and mechanism of the pain-blocking action of vaginal stimulation, and recognition of Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder (PGAD) as a form of genital nerve radiculopathy. The research has been funded by grants from the NIH, NSF, and State and private foundations (grant funding: > $12M) and resulted in more than 160 research articles, plus 170 conference abstracts and 4 books, including “The Science of Orgasm,” published in 7 languages, and in 2017 “Behavioral Neuroendocrinology”. He has received the Hugo F. Beigel Research Award in Sexuality and the Bullough Award of the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and supervised the doctoral dissertations of 26 PhDs and 20 postdoctoral scholars.