Russell S. Witte, PhD

Russell Witte received his B.S. degree with Honors from the University of Arizona in 1993. After extensive travel to Europe and Brazil, he returned to the United States for graduate school in Bioengineering at Arizona State University and embarked on a research project using chronic microelectrode arrays to describe sensory coding and cortical plasticity in the mammalian brain. After earning his Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2002, Dr. Witte moved to University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to develop new ultrasound contrast mechanisms for imaging especially excitable tissue (i.e., brain, nerve and muscle). As a member of the Biomedical Ultrasonics Laboratory, he helped devise several new imaging techniques, such as ultrasound current source density imaging for detecting current flow in biological tissue. In July 2007, Dr. Witte became Assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Arizona. As Director of the Experimental Ultrasound and Neural Imaging Laboratory, he continues to develop new imaging methods using a combination of light, ultrasound, radiofrequency, electrical currents and other mechanisms to create noninvasive, fast, and relatively inexpensive images that provide a greater amount of more specific information. These technologies can be applied to study a variety of medical disorders from neuromuscular disease to cancer angiogensis.