Dean’s Council member since October 2017

A UC Santa Cruz alumnus (1978, Biology, Crown College), Russell is an entrepreneur and cardiologist. After 20+ years as an interventional cardiologist with the Florida Heart Institute and an early investigator in stent development, he went to business school and shifted his focus to the biomedical device industry. He recently founded of Studio9, which focuses on finding opportunity in the rapidly changing healthcare environment. He is also on the medical advisory board of Carrum Health (a healthcare network solution for self-insured employers) and a senior advisor for DermaSensor (a company designing handheld sensors for skin cancer). He joined Velomedix in 2012, first as a consultant and then as the chief medical officer. He was the founding CEO of Vida Systems, Inc. a medical education software company developing game-based surgical training systems and interactive health education software. Before that, he was chief medical officer at Paracor Medical, Inc., a venture-backed heart failure device company. And from 2002-2004, he consulted at Guidant Compass Group, Medtronic, and Apollo Capital Group.
Russell holds his BS, with Honors, from UC Santa Cruz, his Doctor of Medicine degree from Chicago Medical School (1982), and an MBA from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business (2002).