Dr. Luisa Russell serves as a program director for NIBIB’s Division of Discovery Science and Technology. She currently has oversight of discovery and research grants with an emphasis on biochemical engineering and participates in the development of new initiatives.

Prior to joining NIBIB, Dr. Russell served as a CRTA Postdoctoral Fellow in research and grants management in the Nanodelivery Systems and Devices Branch of the Cancer Imaging Program at NCI. In this role she led coordination of the nanoinformatics efforts at the NCI, including serving as team lead and nanotechnology expert for the caNanoLab online database for cancer nanomedicine research. She also participated in nanomedicine and nanoinformatics-based NIH and interagency working groups and worked closely with the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory.  She received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in the Institute for NanoBioTechnology (INBT). Her thesis work focused on the push to standardize the way nanomedicines for passive accumulation in solid tumors are characterized, including development of an in vivo protocol for cross-platform benchmarking, and in the development and characterization of a novel CD47 marker-of-self based liposome.  Dr. Russell graduated from Stanford University with a B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering, during which she conducted research as an undergraduate on electron microscopy techniques for analysis of nanoparticle interactions with biological systems.