Russell is Dean of the College of Health and Medicine at The Australian National University. He is a specialist trauma surgeon, and has a PhD in health services research, and post-doctorate qualifications in health policy, medical ethics and business management from Harvard.

In 2009 he became the world’s first Professor of Surgery and Public Health, a post created at Monash University and The Alfred, where he was a trauma surgeon and Director of the Australian National Trauma Research Institute. In 2015 he moved to Singapore to be Director of the Institute for Health Technologies, and Vice-Dean in the new Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, in partnership with Imperial College London.

Russell has particular focus on health system innovations, especially in resource-poor settings. His doctoral thesis examined outreach services to improve access to specialist care for remote Aboriginal communities. He is a Lancet Commissioner in Global Surgery and is currently President of the Alliance for Surgery and Anaesthesia Presence, supporting careers in global surgery around the world. In trauma and injury he led development of the Australian Trauma Registry, a 5-year Australia-India Grand Challenge Project on Trauma System development in India, documented the development of the Victorian State Trauma System in his book From Roadside to Recovery, and co-founded the WHO Global Alliance for Care of the Injured.  

He has over 20 years’ experience working with the WHO, the Indian Government, Australian Government programs and international professional societies, to solve big problems through partnerships and intersectoral collaboration, advanced technologies, and creative business models. He has been an NHMRC Practitioner Fellow and the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons’ John Mitchell Crouch Fellow, and is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences, the Academy of Medicine of Singapore, and the International Surgical Society.