Past Directors

Edward P. Radford, MD

Director From 1964-1967

Following Dr. Kehoe’s long and productive guidance of the Kettering Laboratory, his first successor, Dr. Edward Radford, was appointed in 1964. Dr. Radford’s major challenge was to build on the foundations laid by Dr. Kehoe, and to transform a University Affiliated Institution into a full academic department in the College of Medicine. Dr. Radford was born in 1922, and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his medical degree at Harvard in 1946.  His major areas of specialization were lung physiology and health effects of radiation exposure. During his service in the Air Force from 1947 to 1949, one of his duties was the radiation survey following the atomic bomb tests in the South Pacific. He subsequently remained deeply involved in radiation research.  

As Director of the Department of Environmental Health he took advantage of the increasing federal funds for biomedical research and established one of the first NIEHS Centers of Excellence, the Center for the Study of the Human Environment. This was perhaps the most important achievement of Dr. Radford in Cincinnati, and was accompanied by a shift in the Department away from an earlier emphasis on industrially sponsored research. The new Center, subsequently under Dr. Suskind, grew and remained active until the arrival of Dr. Nebert in 1992, when major changes in research emphasis led to its reformulation as the Center for Environmental Genetics. In 1967, Dr. Radford left Cincinnati to join John Hopkins University, and then in 1979, he became chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Ernest C. Foulkes, PhD

Interim Director from 1967-1969 and 1994-1996

Following the unexpected early departure of Dr. Radford in 1967, Dr. Foulkes was appointed as interim Director of the Department of Environmental Health. His assignment was to continue the process initiated by Dr. Radford to transform the University Affiliated Kettering Laboratory into the regular academic Department of Environmental Health within the College of Medicine. Born in 1924, and after schooling in Germany, Belgium and Australia, Dr. Foulkes trained as a Biochemist at the Universities of Sydney and Oxford (England). In 1952 he joined the May Institute of the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati and the Department of Physiology at UC. After a five-year tenure as an established investigator of the American Heart Association, he transferred to the Department of Environmental Health in 1965 as one of Dr. Radford’s early appointments.

His research interests focused on heavy metal metabolism and renal toxicology, and he chaired the Metals Specialty Section of the Society of Toxicology. He remained involved in administrative activities as Associate Director under the next two departmental chairs, Drs. Suskind and Albert. After Dr. Albert’s retirement in 1994, Dr. Foulkes was again asked to serve as Interim Director. His task for the next two years became to guide the Department through a period of financial exigency, until the appointment of a new director, Dr. Marshall Anderson in 1996. In 1998, Dr. Foulkes retired as Emeritus Professor, but continues to participate in Departmental affairs.

Raymond R. Suskind, MD

Director from 1969-1985

The career of Raymond R. Suskind, a leading physician and scientist in the field of environmental health, occupational medicine and dermatology, was closely associated with the University of Cincinnati. After completing his undergraduate medical training in New York City he served an internship at the Cincinnati General Hospital, now the University Hospital (1944-46). This was followed by a residency in the Department of Dermatology (1946-48) and a research fellowship in the Kettering Laboratory of the College of Medicine (1948-50), where he developed a skin toxicology and immunology research program. After an interlude at the University of Oregon Medical School, where Dr. Suskind established an environmental medicine research program, he was reclaimed in 1969 by the University of Cincinnati to become Director of the Department of Environmental Health. It was under his leadership over the next several years that a strong academic research program was built, consistent with the new frontiers of technological developments in the biological sciences.

Dr. Suskind was an active member of numerous national and international advisory councils and an advisor to several foreign countries. A measure of his success and standing in the department under his leadership is given by the fact that during these years the department developed ties and international assistance programs with 37 countries, from all continents…He was instrumental in organizing a strong and continuing advocacy program in both houses of Congress for the support of research and training in environmental and occupational health. Awards for his leadership in research and education include the Project Hope Award in 1984, the college of medicine’s Daniel Drake Medal in 1985, and the Robert A Kehoe Award by the American Academy of Occupational Medicine in 1987.

Roy E. Albert, MD

Director from 1985-1994

Dr. Roy Albert attended Columbia University, and then New York University’s School of Medicine from which he graduated at the age of 22. He took an internship in Internal Medicine at the Bellevue Third Medical Divisions Research Laboratory at Fort Knox, Kentucky. In 1949, Dr. Albert returned to NYU Medical School for a fellowship in cardiovascular hemodynamics. Later, he was the first full-time MD at the Health and Safety Laboratory, and at the AEC Headquarters he researched the hazards of radiation, which took him both into the mines at Johannesburg, Africa and to Bikini Island in the South Pacific. While at NYU, where he became vice chairman of the Department of Environmental Medicine, he worked on lung clearance and tumorigenesis.

In 1985, he was appointed Director of the Department of Environmental Health at the University of Cincinnati where he served in this capacity until 1994, at which time he was appointed Professor Emeritus. He was an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Stockinger Award, as well as several medals from the EPA for developing the field of carcinogen risk assessment. Dr. Albert remained active in later years, attaining his pilot’s license after age 70. He played the violin in the Seven Hills Sinfonietta, was an avid tennis player, and participated in the Senior Olympics. In 2001, he wrote his memoirs, providing a glimpse of the flavor of his life, as well as the dire working conditions and the unhealthy labor practices he sought to change.

Marshall W. Anderson, PhD

Director from 1996-2003

Marshall Anderson was born in Lynchburg, Virginia and earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Tennessee in 1966. He followed that with a postdoctoral fellowship in Biomathematics at North Carolina State University. In 1971 he began a 22 year career at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, where he developed a long standing interest in the molecular toxicology of cancer causing agents.

In 1996 he was recruited to head the Department of Environmental Health. At UC, he continued his research interests in lung cancer and directed the Genetic Epidemiology of Lung Cancer Consortium and the Chemoprevention of Lung Cancer Program Project. He recruited 16 new faculty members to the department and promoted the expansion of environmental genetics research. He also encouraged the study of complex diseases which have both an environmental and genetic basis, eg., cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and many neurological disorders.

In 2003, Dr. Anderson stepped down as Chairperson and assumed an appointment in the Department of Genome Sciences. In this role, he was charged with expanding cancer research programs within this newly formed department, and the associated Genome Research Institute.