Jonathan Kruskal, MD, PhD, of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center will become the 121st president of the American Roentgen Ray Society (ARRS) during the ARRS 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting this week. He succeeds Alexander Norbash, MD, who served as ARRS president from 2020 to 2021. 

“I am truly honored, and I look forward to serving as your President over the next year,” Kruskal told the ARRS membership in his Annual Meeting opening remarks. “I would also like to congratulate our newly elected ARRS officers—President-Elect Gary Whitman, Vice President Erik Paulson, and Secretary-Treasurer Angelisa Paladin—and thank our outgoing president, Alex Norbash, for successfully steering our society throughout a rather challenging and tumultuous year.”

Kruskal received his MB, ChB from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa in 1982 and, after an internship in medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, joined the South African Liver Research Center at UCT Medical School as a research scholar, where, in 1987, he earned a PhD in molecular biology and liver tumor physiology. Kruskal came to the United States in 1987; in 1988, he completed a post-doctoral research fellowship at the Study Center for Anesthesia Toxicology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn.

In 1994, he completed radiology residency training at Harvard Medical School’s New England Deaconess Hospital in Boston and stayed on as radiology staff member, specializing in abdominal imaging. In 1998, as a Radiological Society of North America Scholar, he developed a mouse liver tumor model for using optical and molecular imaging technology to image mechanisms of intrahepatic tumor growth and metastases. Rising to Chief of Abdominal Imaging in 2001 and Chair of Radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in 2008, his focus has shifted to include practice and physician quality and performance improvement.

An internationally recognized lecturer and teacher, Kruskal serves on numerous national society committees, including the Executive Council and as vice president (2019), president-elect (2020), and now president of ARRS; president (2019) of the Society of Abdominal Radiology; deputy editor and chair of the Practice, Policy, and Quality Initiatives panel of RadioGraphics (2010–2020); chairman of the Quality Management and Inter-Society Committees of the American College of Radiology, and is a member of the board of chancellors for the American College of Radiology.

Currently, he is professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School and chairman of the department of radiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.