Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD
RSNA President, Boston, MA
Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD, is president of RSNA, chief of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, director of the Center for Precision Imaging, associate chair for imaging sciences in the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School in Boston. An accomplished researcher, he has received more than $25 million in grant funding as principal investigator, primarily from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), for his research into the applications of molecular imaging to guide precision medicine, particularly in developing and applying positron emission tomography (PET) and optical imaging technologies for disease characterization and therapy optimization.
During his career, Dr. Mahmood has had a longstanding commitment to growing the next generation of physician scientists. Of the more than 100 research trainees he has guided, many have become academic medical faculty, and a number have received their own research funding as principal investigator under his direct mentorship.
Prior to joining the RSNA Board of Directors in 2017 as the liaison for international relations, Dr. Mahmood served as a member of RSNA's Research & Education (R&E) Foundation Board of Trustees, as chair of the R&E Foundation's grant program, as vice chair of RSNA’s Committee on Scientific Affairs, as an associate editor of Radiology and as a chair or member of multiple other RSNA committees focused on advancing imaging sciences. Dr. Mahmood received an R&E Foundation Research Resident Grant in 2000.
Additionally, Dr. Mahmood has served as chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Clinical Center of the NIH. He is a fellow of the American College of Radiology, a fellow of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) and has served on the SNMMI Board of Directors and as chair of the SNMMI Scientific Program Committee. He has received the Distinguished Investigator award from the Academy for Radiology & Biomedical Imaging Research and served on its executive committee. He also served on the executive committee of the International Society of Radiology.
Dr. Mahmood earned his bachelor’s degree from the California Institute of Technology and his medical degree and doctorate in biophysics and physiology from Cornell University. His doctoral and postdoctoral work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center focused on tumor energetics and membrane physiology, and he studied using 31P nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. He completed his radiology residency at MGH in 2001 and has maintained faculty appointments at MGH and Harvard Medical School since. During his more than 25 years at MGH, he has conducted PET, optical and MR imaging research, and has focused on translational efforts to better understand drivers of cancer, including the tumor microenvironment, cancer signaling pathways, changes in cancer metabolism and the interaction of the immune system with tumors.