Harvard Catalyst Profiles

University of Zurich Medical School, Zurich, Switzerland

M.D.

1982

Medicine

Dr. Ron Kikinis received his M.D. degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1982. He trained as a resident in radiology at the University Hospital in Zurich, and as a researcher in computer vision at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1988, he moved to Brigham & Women's Hospital, and in 1990, founded the Surgical Planning Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA. In 2004, he was appointed Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School, and in 2010, was appointed the Robert Greenes Distinguished Director of Biomedical Informatics, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital. From January 2014 through February 2020, he took on a part-time position in Germany as "Institutsleiter" of Fraunhofer MEVIS and Professor of Medical Image Computing at the University of Bremen, while continuing his activities in the U.S. On March 1, 2020, he returned to Boston full time and was appointed the B. Leonard Holman Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, and Vice-Chair for Biomedical Informatics Research, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

During the mid-80's, Dr. Kikinis developed a scientific interest in image processing algorithms and their use for extracting relevant information from medical imaging data. Since then, this topic has matured from a fairly exotic topic to a field of science. This is due to the explosive increase of both the quantity and complexity of imaging data. Dr. Kikinis has led and has participated in research in different areas of science. His activities include technological research (segmentation, registration, visualization, high performance computing), software system development, and biomedical research in a variety of biomedical specialties. The majority of his research is interdisciplinary in nature and is conducted by multidisciplinary teams. The results of his research have been reported in a variety of peer-reviewed journal articles. He is an author and co-author of over 350 peer-reviewed articles.

Over the years Dr. Kikinis has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) and site PI of a number of large and small NIH and NSF funded grants. This includes the National Alliance for Medical Image Computing (NA-MIC) and Quantitative Image Informatics for Cancer Research (QIICR). He is currently serving as the PI of the Neuroimaging Analysis Center (NAC) and the NCI-funded Imaging Data Commons (IDC). He is also the Director of Collaborations for the National Center for Image Guided Therapy (NCIGT).

As part of his service to the community, Dr. Kikinis serves as reviewer for a large number of journals and conferences in the fields of imaging, biomedical engineering and computer science. He has served, and is serving, on external advisory boards for a variety of centers and research efforts. He is the Principal Investigator of 3D Slicer, a free open source software platform for image analysis and visualization.

Dr. Kikinis’ activities have resulted in a number of honors and awards, including the inaugural "Enduring Impact Award" of the MICCAI Society in 2009, when he was also appointed a fellow of the MICCAI Society. In 2013, he was appointed “Ehrenmitglied” of the CURAC Society. In 2019, he was appointed a fellow of the ISMRM and also received the prestigious Harvard Medical School “Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award.”