Eric J. Russell, M.D., F.A.C.R.
Eric J. Russell, M.D., F.A.C.R.
Professor and Chairman, Department of Radiology
The Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University, and the Northwestern Memorial Hospital
The position that I currently hold as Chair is not one that I initially sought out, but is one which I welcome as an honor and a challenge. The approach that I have always taken with respect to my career is to focus on doing the best job that I could, whatever my role. I have also been fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time at key branching points in my life, and having the opportunity to train at NYU is one of them. It is the joy of practicing neuroradiology that has really driven me to succeed, and I will never give up my clinical practice. As Chair, I can also now apply my experience and skill to help secure the future of our specialty, and influence young radiologists to enter an academic career.
Radiata: After completing your radiology residency at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx you moved to Manhattan to do a Neuroradiology fellowship at NYU with Dr. Irvin Kricheff. What role did NYU play in your career?
EJR: NYU represented a turning point in my development as a radiologist. It provided exposure to a research oriented environment, and allowed me to work with great faculty role models. Training under Irvin Kricheff, then Chief of Neuroradiology, was critical to my becoming an academic radiologist. He was dedicated to the scientific construct, he established the context in which to frame my clinical training, and he lit the research fire. At NYU, I also was influenced by unbelievably talented clinician/scientists-Dick Pinto, Joe Lin and Ajax George. I was turned on to interventional neuroradiology by a true zealot, Alex Berenstein, who was a first year attending when I was a second year fellow. But contact with Irv and Ajax was instrumental to my pursuing a career in academics. I learned not just a love of research, but the importance of guidance and mentoring of residents and junior faculty. If it weren’t for these role models, I might well have ended up in private practice.
Radiata: Are there any other significant mentors in your professional life?
EJR: I owe a lot to Harold Jacobson, the former Chair of Radiology at Montefiore, and the two Neuroradiologists who first lit the “Neuroradiology fire” in me: Norm Leeds and Bob Zimmerman at Montefiore. Their excellence and joy in their profession infected me, and they both remain close friends. Going further back to my days as a medical student, Lucy Squire played a pivotal role in my career, as she did with so many others who took her elective in Radiology. I was headed into internal medicine and my experience with Dr. Squire, in conjunction with my growing dissatisfaction with my training in internal medicine, led me to a career in Radiology.
Radiata: In what ways do you mentor your own faculty?
EJR: On a departmental basis I strive to provide opportunities for my faculty to succeed, to provide the time, funding and infrastructure necessary for academic success. On a personal basis, I particularly enjoy editing manuscripts and grant proposals-this is one of the things I do best. I suspect I have a mild variant of obsessive/compulsive disorder, so this process appeals to me. In the process of mentoring, timing is of the utmost importance. The mentoring process must begin early in a junior faculty’s career, or even earlier—in fact we must influence trainees and medical students to seek an academic career in Radiology. We have of late been encouraging students to do a year of research in our department before beginning their radiology residencies. We hope that it will produce a generation of strong clinician scientists, and we have had a great deal of success in this regard at Northwestern.
Radiata: You’ve been at Northwestern for close to 20 years, and have been Chairman for the last 2 years. What changes to the department are you implementing?
EJR: The department has undergone a major turnaround in our ability to support and conduct funded research. This process was initiated several years ago by the former Chairman, Dieter Enzmann. Our department has always been known for excellence in clinical service and clinical research, and we have a deserved reputation as a great training institution. The major turn around is that we are becoming a research powerhouse. My role is to create a culture which nurtures research, and to establish the infrastructure to allow this to happen, without losing our parallel focus on clinical excellence. This includes recruiting basic science faculty and providing academic time necessary for clinical faculty to get involved in the research effort. We have methods to award seed grant money to allow the development of preliminary data, encouraging applications for extramural funding. External funding is required for us to grow our research programs.
Radiata: What are your biggest challenges as a Radiology Chairman?
EJR: Our radiology department is part of a large multi-specialty group practice of about 550 physicians. We must grow the department while we contribute to the success of the practice, and as we all know, there are significant financial challenges to the practice of medicine that we must navigate to succeed long-term.
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