Appointment of New Chair of Department of Radiology

posted April 15th, 2010

To:       School of Medicine Faculty, Students and House Staff

From:  Nancy Andrews, M.D., Ph.D.
            Dean, Duke University School of Medicine

RE:      Appointment of New Chair of Department of Radiology
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I am pleased to share with you the news that Geoffrey Rubin, M.D., has accepted our offer to become the next chairman of the Department of Radiology. While the search for this critically important chair position produced many outstanding candidates, Geoff emerged as a top candidate early on. His selection for, and acceptance of, this position has been received with great enthusiasm by the search committee, senior leadership involved in the decision, and those who have had the opportunity to meet with Geoff through the interviewing process. Geoff expects to assume his new responsibilities here in August, 2010.

Geoff is currently professor of radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine where he also serves as Chief of Cardiovascular Imaging, and Medical Director of the 3-D Laboratory in the department of radiology. He is also Vice Chief of Staff, Stanford Hospitals, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs for the Stanford University School of Medicine, and Associate Director of the Cardiovascular Institute at Stanford.

Throughout the recruitment process, we were very impressed by Geoff's track record for effective leadership and his vision for clinical, teaching and research missions. He has creative plans for maximizing the many clinical opportunities in radiology, as well as addressing departmental challenges. Geoff will be immediately engaged in strategic planning and service delivery in the major Duke Cancer Center and Duke Medicine Pavilion projects which will both begin structural construction in coming weeks.

In addition, Geoff brings with him a strong commitment to nurturing and further enhancing the research agenda in the department. A pioneer of CT angiography for the diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases, his personal research interests currently focus on coupling cardiovascular and pulmonary computed tomography with novel image processing techniques to detect, characterize, quantify, and visualize structures as aids in diagnosis and treatment planning. He is the PI on a National Institutes of Health RO1 grant that is studying how to improve radiologist detection of lung nodules with computer-aided detection, and was recently a co-PI on a second RO1 grant related to efficient interpretation of 3D vascular image data.

I know that Geoff was very impressed with the quality of the faculty and staff with whom he met during the recruitment process and is excited about the opportunity to lead a department that has great strength in research and in clinical service. He is also looking forward to forging close collaborations with other departments throughout the School, and is energized, as are many of us, by the commitment to state-of-the-art clinical and research imaging technologies that will be a part of the new Duke Cancer Center and Duke Medicine Pavilion facilities.

Geoff, a lifelong Californian, his wife Rhesa, and their five children will be coming to North Carolina after living 22 years in the San Francisco Bay Area. He received his bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology, and earned his M.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He performed his radiology residency, and a body imaging fellowship, at Stanford in the late '80s and early '90s before joining the faculty at Stanford as an Assistant Professor in 1993.

While I expect Geoff to become involved in several key projects here very soon, I greatly appreciate Carl Ravin's willingness to continue as Interim Chair of Radiology until Dr. Rubin physically arrives in August.

I want to express my deep appreciation to Dr. Chris Willett for chairing this search committee and producing such a successful result. I also want to thank the members of the committee for their time and hard work: Dr. Anna Mae Diehl, Dr. Allen Song, Carolyn Carpenter, Dr. Dona Chikaraishi, Dr. Eric Velazquez, Dr. Eugene Oddone, Dr. Haywood Brown, Dr. John Sampson, Dr. Kathryn Andolsek, Dr. Linda Gray Leithe, Dr. Elizabeth DeLong, Dr. Mark Dewhirst, Dr. Tuan Vo-Dinh, Dr. Warren Warren and Dr. Monica Kraft.