Thomas Russo, MD, is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. His clinical and research focus is on infectious diseases. As a practicing physician, he cares for hospitalized patients at the Buffalo VA Medical Center (Buffalo VAMC).
Earning his undergraduate degree from Tufts University and his medical degree from McGill University, Russo completed a clinical and research fellowship in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Harvard Medical School and Tufts-New England Medical Center. Russo was a senior staff fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s Laboratory of Clinical Investigation for five years before joining UB’s faculty in 1994.
Russo’s research focus is on pathogenesis, and drug and vaccine development against extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli, Acinetobacter baumannii and a new pathotype of Klebsiella pneumoniae. His work is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration. He has published over 150 peer reviewed papers and book chapters.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Russo has educated and informed the university, health care providers, the public and businesses about how best to manage this evolving crisis. He has become such a familiar source for local, national and international media reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic that The Buffalo News deemed him “Buffalo’s Dr. Fauci.”
Russo teaches medical students in lecture settings and small-group sessions and teaches clinical patient care to medical students, residents and fellows at the VAMC. In addition, he mentors students, residents and fellows in his laboratory.
Russo has been honored with numerous awards. These include the SUNY Inventor Award, recognition as one of UB’s Top 100 Principal Investigators, the Stockton Kimball Award for consistent academic accomplishment, significant research discoveries and contributions to the progress of UB and the Jacobs School, the Dean’s Award-Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, the Veterans Administration Biomedical Laboratory R&D Senior Clinical Scientist award, and the Chancellor Charles P. Norton Medal in public recognition of a person who has, in Norton’s words, “performed some great thing which is identified with Buffalo … a great civic or political act, a great book, a great work of art, a great scientific achievement or any other thing which, in itself, is truly great and ennobling, and which dignifies the performer and Buffalo in the eyes of the world.”