Russell is Dean of the College of Health and Medicine at The Australian National University. He is a specialist trauma surgeon, and has a PhD in health services research, and postdoctorate qualifications in health policy, medical ethics and business management.

In 30 years of clinical practice, he has also been Director of the Australian National Trauma Research Institute, and Director of the Institute for Health Technologies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. As the world’s first Professor of Surgery and Public Health, a position created at Monash University, and a Lancet Commissioner in Global Surgery, he worked with national governments, the WHO and the private sector to progress surgical and trauma systems in resource-rich and resource-poor settings. As a Harkness Fellow in Healthcare Policy at Harvard he had significant impact on contemporary approaches to medical professionalism, an interest he carries through in his teaching today.

He led the creation of the Australian Trauma Registry, an Australia-India Trauma System Collaboration, and successful large clinical trials in severely injured patients. He was an editor of the Cochrane Collaboration’s Effective Practice and Organization of Care Group, and co-invented Living Systematic Reviews and the systematic review software tool, Covidence ®. His research has been recognised with the Australia’s top clinician-scientist awards and with election as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Academy of Medicine of Singapore, and the International Surgical Society, and to the Board of Research Australia.

Russell’s colourful and seemingly diverse career spanning remote Indigenous communities, developing health systems, and some of the world’s finest institutions, is linked together by common threads of science and service, and his commitment to precision and progress.