Dr. Dirks’ clinical interests lie with the entire spectrum of pediatric neurosurgical practice, with emphasis on the surgical treatment of childhood brain tumours and brain vascular malformations. His research laboratory is within the Arthur and Sonia Labatt Brain Tumour Research Centre at the Hospital for Sick Children where his focus is on the biology of brain tumours of children and adults, with a primary aim to understand how the molecular programs in normal neural stem cells become perturbed to cause and sustain the growth of these hard-to-treat cancers.  In addition, he is interested in brain tumour heterogeneity and how the diverse cell types that comprise these tumours contribute to tumour maintenance and therapeutic resistance.