The Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital announces a milestone transition in its leadership: Bruce Rosen, MD, PhD, is stepping down as director after decades of transformative service both to the Center and to the broader field of biomedical imaging. Succeeding him is Susie Huang, MD, PhD, who brings with her an extraordinary record of scientific achievement and institutional leadership that positions the Center for its next era of discovery.
Dr. Rosen led the Center through a period of unparalleled growth and accomplishment. He first assumed a leadership role in the early 1990s, when the Center was still known as the MGH-NMR Center, and oversaw a period of rapid expansion fueled in part by the success of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a revolutionary neuroimaging technique that he helped pioneer. In 2000, he presided over the renaming of the Center with a generous gift in honor of Athinoula A. Martinos, who had attended MIT before her untimely passing. Under his stewardship in the quarter-century since, the Center has grown from a handful or two of young researchers redefining the possible in biomedical imaging to one of the world’s premier biomedical imaging research centers, with more than 150 faculty developing first-of-a-kind technologies and applying them to solve challenges in neuroscience, oncology, cardiology and other clinical areas.
While stepping back from the directorship, Dr. Rosen is far from stepping back from science. He will continue in his role as vice chair for research for Mass General Brigham Radiology and return his focus to his own research program.
Dr. Huang is ideally suited to lead the center into the future. She assumes the directorship having already established herself as one of the most accomplished researchers and institutional leaders in the field. A neuroradiologist and current Associate Director of the Martinos Center, she holds the James L. and Elisabeth C. Gamble Endowed Chair and serves as an Associate Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Her research has focused on advancing diffusion MRI to achieve in vivo histological sensitivity — work with direct implications for neurological diseases including multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and brain injury. As principal investigator, she has secured more than $35 million in research funding over the past decade, spanning MRI physics, biomarker validation, and clinical translation, including the multi-institutional NIH BRAIN Initiative Connectome 2.0 program for next-generation mapping of brain tissue microstructure and connectional anatomy.
Her accomplishments extend well beyond her scientific output. Dr. Huang serves on the Board of Trustees of the ISMRM, serves as Deputy Editor of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and has contributed to editorial boards of several leading journals in the field. Her honors include the Distinguished Investigator Award from the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research, the Thrall Mentor Award from MGH, and election as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Her academic pedigree is equally distinguished: she earned her undergraduate and master’s degrees in Chemistry from Harvard summa cum laude, her PhD from UCLA, and her MD magna cum laude from Harvard Medical School, completing both her residency and fellowship at MGH — where she served as both chief resident and chief fellow.
The transition represents a continuation as well as an evolution for the Center. Dr. Huang steps into the directorship having spent much of her career at the Martinos Center, shaped by its culture of collaborative, technology-driven science — and having helped shape that culture in return. Under her leadership, the Center looks forward to deepening its commitment to developing and deploying cutting-edge imaging tools with equal parts research and clinical impact, carrying forward the legacy Dr. Rosen so indelibly established.
