Ranga Krishnan
RUSH University
Since joining Rush in October 2015, Krishnan has reorganized Rush Medical College’s curriculum to keep the college at the vanguard of medical education. Among other features, the new curriculum provides students with prerecorded instructional content. This innovation reduces class time spent on lectures and shifts the emphasis to teams of students collaborating on case studies.
Krishnan is leading innovation of care delivery at Rush, as well, by organizing providers around patients and diseases and conditions, rather than by department or division, to enable greater collaboration. The service line approach enables providers to share expertise, ultimately improving patient care, quality and safety. Service lines established to date include liver, cancer, cardiac, neurology and neurosurgery, and mental health.
Krishnan has been instrumental in forging key external partnerships, including with Tempus, a Chicago-based technology company with expertise in gene sequencing and analysis. Krishnan also has restructured Rush’s Innovation and Technology strategy including the Innovation and technology Transfer Office (ITTO), which manages Rush intellectual properties (IP) and assists inventors, authors and other creators of intellectual property at Rush in the process of IP disclosure, protection, marketing and licensing. He is currently working to launch Rush3D (Design, Demonstrate, Deliver), through which Rush will work with external inventors needing a “sandbox” for exploring opportunities and co-development.
Prior to joining Rush, Krishnan served for eight years as dean of the Duke–NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (now Duke-NUS Medical School). Krishnan arrived at Duke University Medical Center in 1981, when he began a residency in psychiatry, which he followed with a fellowship in neurobiology. He joined the Duke faculty in 1985 and was a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences from 1995 to 2015. As chairman of the department from 1998 until 2009, he implemented an innovative continuing-education network while overseeing more than 490 faculty members.