Russell M. Medford, MD, PhD

Chairman, Board of Directors, Center for Global Health Innovation
Chairman and CEO, Covanos, Inc. 

Russell M. Medford, MD, PhD is Chairman and CEO of Covanos (www.covanos.com), an Atlanta-based medical technology company, developing advanced computational technologies for the non-invasive diagnosis and management of cardiovascular disease. He is a senior executive with over 25 years private and public company experience as Chief Executive Officer and Board member of multiple public and private biotechnology, medical technology, digital health and other health related companies, organizations and research institutes.

Dr. Medford serves as founding Chairman of the Center for Global Health Innovation (www.cghi.org) that represents a coalition of over 250 Georgia and national organizations and companies involved in global health, life science innovation and health technology through the merger of Georgia BIO, Georgia Global Health Alliance and Global Health ATL in January, 2020. He also served as Co-chair of the CGHI’s Global Health Crisis Coordination Center that was emergently launched in March, 2020 at the request of the CDC Foundation to help coordinate 1) the corporate, philanthropic, non-government organization (NGO) and academic sectors’ responses to, and 2) their collaborations with public health and other government agencies, in our collective fight to defeat the Covid- 19 pandemic. Previously, he was Chairman of Global Health ATL, Founding Vice-Chairman of the Georgia Global Health Alliance and a past Chairman of Georgia BIO.

He is a board-certified physician, serves on the Executive Committee/Board of Directors of the Global Center for Medical Innovation (www.gcmiatl.org) at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GIT), External Advisory Board for GIT’s Petit Institute of Bioscience and Bioengineering, Board of Directors of the cell-based therapeutics manufacturing company ThermoGenesis Holdings (Nasdaq:THMO) and Chairman of the Board for the oncology therapeutics company Oncospherix, Inc. He is an inaugural Fellow of the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Sciences of the American Heart Association, a past member of Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s (BIO) Board of Directors (2002-2014), Co-Chairman of BIO’s Bioethics Committee, Chairman of the BIO’s 2009 International Convention Steering Committee (held for the first time in Atlanta, Georgia) and a member of the Advisory Council of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. From 1995 to 2009, Dr. Medford served as co-founder, President, CEO and Director AtheroGenics, Inc (Nasdaq: AGIX) and was a founding Board Director of Inhibitex, Inc. (Nasdaq: INHX).

He has received numerous awards including the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award (Southeast), the Biomedical Industry Growth Award (GeorgiaBIO, Atlanta), CATALYST Magazine’s Top 50 Entrepreneurs, the SCRIPP Best Partnership Alliance (London), Platinum Winner (Covanos) of the AMP’D Arena Pitch Competition at the 2019 Medical Innovation Summit, organized by Cleveland Clinic and co-sponsored by the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and the 2020 Cade Fibonacci Prize Finalist (Covanos, 4th Place Winner).

He received a B.A. from Cornell University, and a M.D. with Distinction and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, completing his residency and cardiology fellowship at Harvard’s Beth Israel and Brigham and Women’s Hospitals in Boston, Mass. where he also served on the faculty of Medicine. He served on the faculty at Emory University as an Associate Professor of Medicine prior to founding AtheroGenics and serving as its CEO. He publishes widely and holds 16 U.S. and international patents.