David C. Levin, M.D., professor and chairman emeritus of the department of radiology at Jefferson Medical College and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, first became interested in medicine while serving as a jet fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from Cornell University. He subsequently received his M.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, then did a surgical internship and radiology residency at the UCLA Medical Center. During the course of his career in academic radiology, he has held faculty appointments at the New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center in New York City, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, and Harvard Medical School. While at Harvard, he was head of cardiovascular/interventional radiology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, before being appointed acting chairman of that department. He came to Jefferson as radiology chairman in 1986, and held that post for 16 years before stepping down at the end of June 2002. Since then, he has served as national medical director for HealthHelp, Inc., a radiology utilization management company based in Houston; on the board of directors of Outpatient Imaging Affiliates LLC, an imaging center development firm based in Nashville; and as consultant in radiology for ECRI, a healthcare technology consulting firm. He also continues to work in Jefferson’s Department of Radiology doing coronary CT angiography. All of these are part-time positions.

Dr. Levin has served as chairman of the Council on Cardiovascular Radiology of the American Heart Association and president of the Society of Chairmen of Academic Radiology Departments (SCARD). At the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA), he served as chair of the cardiovascular section of the Program Committee, head of the health policy and practice section of the Refresher Course Committee, and chair of the Committee on Health Policy and Practice. He was and still is a member of several committees and commissions of the American College of Radiology. He has been an examiner at the American Board of Radiology oral exams and a member of the editorial boards of six radiology journals. In research, he has published 229 papers, 1 textbook, 21 book chapters, and 267 abstracts. He has given 508 presentations at national medical meetings or as an invited lecturer at academic institutions. Among these are 18 named or other special lectures around the country and abroad. The most recent of these were the 13th Robert D. Moreton Lecture at the American College of Radiology annual meeting in April 2005, the Benjamin Felson Memorial Lecture at the Society of Thoracic Radiology annual meeting in March 2006, and the Preston Hickey Lecture at the Michigan Radiological Society in March 2007. Dr. Levin’s research interests in the past have included the morphologic aspects of coronary artery stenosis, results of angioplasty and other percutaneous interventions in the treatment of vascular disease, and diagnosis of cardiac and vascular diseases by angiography. In 1981, he received the Herbert Stauffer Award of the Association of University Radiologists (AUR) for the best published basic science research paper on a study dealing with vascular resistance changes in an experimental model of arterial stenosis. More recently, his research has focused upon economic issues in radiology, such as the utilization and costs of imaging procedures, the effects of self-referral, practice patterns in imaging, image quality, and training requirements. He continues to be actively involved in this type of research, and recently established the Jefferson Center for Research on Utilization of Imaging Services (CRUISE) with the support of outside funding. In 2003, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Roentgen Ray Society. He has been similarly honored by the Pennsylvania Radiological Society and the Philadelphia Roentgen Ray Society. In May 2006, he received the Gold Medal of the American College of Radiology. In March 2008, he will receive the Gold Medal of the Association of University Radiologists.