UCSF Radiology Honors the Career of David Avrin, MD, PhD
After a long and storied career with UCSF, David Avrin, MD, PhD will be retiring effective October 2, 2020. Though Dr. Avrin will be greatly missed as a senior member of the Abdominal Imaging and Interventional Radiology Sections, I could not be prouder of his accomplishments and professional success over the years. I join his sections and our whole department in wishing him a well-earned and enjoyable retirement.
After completing his MD/PhD (Electrical Engineering) and residency at Stanford, Dr. Avrin began his tenure at UCSF in 1979 as a visiting fellow in ultrasound. Since 1980, Dr. Avrin has spent the majority of his career on the UCSF faculty. A sojourn of several years at the University of Utah (2002-07) as professor and director, Body Imaging preceded his most recent UCSF appointments as professor in the School of Medicine and professor of clinical radiology and program director, Clinical Informatics ACGME Fellowship Program (2007 – present). From 2007-2016, Dr. Avrin served as our department's Vice Chair, Informatics, overseeing extensive integrations of patient-care information systems (Epic/APeX) with radiology systems to support our clinical, education, and research missions; and conversion of the IDXrad Radiology Information System to Radiant RIS.
As a clinician and teacher, Dr. Avrin's focus has been MR and CT studies of the abdomen and pelvis, including teaching of residents, fellows, and occasionally medical students. In Interventional Radiology, Dr. Avrin performs a wide spectrum of interventional services, supervising hands-on instruction for residents and fellows. Dr. Avrin taught the Radiology 170.07 Current Issues in Medical Informatics Seminar each autumn (2009-15), open to all medical, nursing, pharmacy, and dental students. Dr. Avrin has mentored and supervised a number of pre- and postdoctoral students and residents over the years, many of whom have gone on to positions as faculty or in private practice.
During the past 20 years, Dr. Avrin has kept a busy schedule of presentations at national and international meetings focused on topics related to informatics interoperability and data analytics. His applied research in radiological and medical informatics has focused on infrastructure and applications for system integration and clinical image sharing. Over the years, Dr. Avrin has contributed nearly 60 peer-reviewed articles and numerous chapters, reviews, articles, and conference abstracts to the profession.
This year, Dr. Avrin was awarded the first Gold Medal from the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine. He is a Fellow of the American College of Radiology, the Society of Computer Applications in Radiology, and the Society of Abdominal Imaging. He has held leadership roles with the RSNA including as Chair of the Radiology Informatics Committee, the Education Committee, the Digital Roadmap Steering Committee, and the Research and Education Foundation Corporate Giving Subcommittee. Dr. Avrin has served as Reviewer and Associate Editor for RadioGraphics; reviewer for Radiology, and Journal of Academic Radiology; and reviewer and Editorial Board member for Journal of Digital Imaging. He will continue in his current role as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Digital Imaging as he transitions to Emeritus status in October in the department.
We extend our warmest congratulations to David for a career marked by many accomplishments, his long record of outstanding service to the department and to UCSF, and his lasting contributions to the field of radiology.