2008 Leader in Innovation Award Recipient
Ernest J. Ring, MD
The Award is intended to recognize and promote innovation
within the Society of Interventional Radiology, continuing
IR’s historical development of innovative development that
has revolutionized medicine over the last 30 years. It
acknowledges those individuals who have conceptualized and
implemented an idea that has had an advantageous impact on the
practice of interventional radiology. The innovation can be a
device, technique, approach, clinical practice model, or anything
having a significant improvement upon the quality of patient care
or economics of interventional practice.
Ernest J. Ring, MD exemplifies the qualities that are honored
with this award. As a founding member of SIR and SIR Foundation,
Dr. Ring’s contributions have shaped not only the Society,
but the entire segments in the field of interventional radiology.
After completing residency in Diagnostic Radiology and fellowship
in Cardiovascular Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and
service in the US Navy, he joined the faulty of the Hospital of
the University of Pennsylvania in 1976 and began a career of
excellence clinical and research productivity. While at Penn, he
did ground breaking work in percutaneous angioplasty and became
the leading researcher and innovator in biliary interventions in
this country. He also made major contributions to our knowledge
in embolization in trauma and hepatic neoplasms. In 1982 he moved
to the University of California San Francisco and quickly built
the IR section into a powerhouse. While there, he has made
seminal contributions to our knowledge in transplant
interventions and was a key contributor to the development of
TIPS and related interventions. Along the way, he made major
contributions to the development of tools that are now used daily
in all these procedures. Working closely with Bill Cook and other
early industry innovators, he designed many wires, catheters,
drains and other key technologic advances that are now in routine
use. He also trained many of our current leaders in IR, providing
us new generations of outstanding interventionalists who continue
in his tradition.
Dr Ring was also a key player in the transition of the SIR
from a limited membership society to the broad-based specialty
society that it is today. He served as president of SIR (then
SCVIR) in 1989, and went on to serve as the SIR Foundation
president (then CIRREF) in 1990. The Foundation honored the
contributions of its founder by introducing the Dr. Ernest J.
Ring Academic Development Grant Program in 2000, which is
designed to provide support to IR faculty members early in their
academic careers to allow time for the conduct of research.
Dr. Ring is an active member of several professional medical
organizations, and is a fellow of both SIR and the American
College of Radiology. He currently serves Chief Medical Officer
of the University of California Medical Center at San Francisco.
Dr. Ring is the consummate academic interventional
radiologist- teacher, physician, researcher and innovator and the
SIR Foundation is pleased to honor him as with this year’s
Leaders in Innovation Awardee.
2007 Leaders in Innovation Award Recipient
Robert White, Jr., MD
Jim Spies, MD; Robert White, Jr., MD
Robert White, MD, served SIR as president from 1984 to 1985
and has since continued to lead the specialty in clinical care
and practice building. His concept of multidiscipline care for
the treatment of hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia (HHT) has
been adopted by physicians across the globe and he has
successfully organized 21 international HHT Centers and ten
centers in North America. White is currently the Director of the
Yale University Vascular Malformation Clinical and Research
Group, a “center without walls” which includes
physicians from seven medical disciplines.
During his years at Johns Hopkins University, White
participated in the development of four procedures new to the
U.S.: occlusions of pulmonary arteriovenous malformation (PAVM),
occlusion of varicocele, pulmonary valvuloplasty and balloon
dilatation of coarctation restenosis.
White has authored 249 peer-reviewed publications and is a
member of nine medical societies. He was awarded the SIR Gold
Medal in 2000 and, in 2003, delivered both the Seventh Annual
Charles J. Tegtmeyer Lecture at ISET and the David A. Dines
Lecture at the Mayo Clinic. In 1985, White delivered the Eugene
Pendergrass New Horizons lecture at RSNA, during which he
stressed the importance of interventional radiologists caring for
patients before, during and after a procedure.
Michael Soulen, MD, Chair, SIR Foundation Research Education
Division, described White by stating, “Bob’s
distinguishing contribution is that while others talked, he
created a formal clinical service within a major academic
training center, published on its structure and success, and
propagated it through the specialty.”
Dr. White’s career has been a superior illustration of
quality care and clinical practice, and he continues to teach by
example, focusing on the importance of gathering a thorough
patient history and making follow-up a part of every patient’s
care.
2005 Leader in Innovation
Kurt Amplatz, MD
The innovator of so many of the basic tools of interventional radiology, from various guidewires now considered standards, to renal dilator/sheaths and
thrombectomy devices, Dr. Amplatz is
a founding father and pioneer whose inventive spirit paved the way for so many who followed in his footsteps. Interventional radiology, and more importantly, our patients, are greatly in his debt.
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In 2002, the SIR Foundation established the Leaders in Innovation Award to recognize and promote innovation within the Society of Interventional Radiology. Recipients of the Leaders in Innovation Award are interventional radiology pioneers that have made a career of implementing ideas impacting devices, techniques, and clinical practice models.
Previous Leaders in Innovation Award Recipients
2004 - Constantin Cope, MD
2003 - Irvin F. Hawkins, Jr., MD |
