In 2003, Bayer created a $2 million endowment to help advance cutting-edge medical research at Yale School of Medicine. Through this program, the Bayer Endowment for Scholars in Medicine and Management, Yale awards a fellowship each year to a faculty member who is making significant advances in medicine or health care management. Of particular interest are the areas of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular health, infectious diseases, men's health and medical economics and marketing.
Bayer's long-standing interest in cardiovascular risk management emphasizes innovative therapies to treat coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis and thrombosis.
Russell studies function and metabolism in the heart and changes associated with disease states, especially heart failure and decreased blood flow, and their adaptive or maladaptive functional consequences. He joined the Yale faculty in 2000 after completing a cardiology fellowship at Yale. Work in his lab characterizes function and metabolism in the heart at the molecular level, specifically regulation of glucose transporter expression and translocation to the cell surface in the failing heart. He also studies the role of the metabolic stress protein, AMP-activated protein kinase, and mitochondrial uncoupling proteins in the regulation of carbohydrate and fatty acid metabolism, and protection against oxidative stress and cell death.
Russel's clinical interests include cardiac stress testing and nuclear imaging. He received a B.A. from Rice University in 1984 and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Texas at Houston in 1991.
In addition to supporting the work of the Bayer Fellow, the Bayer initiative envisions greater interaction between Yale scientists and Bayer employees in the form of lectures and conferences on topics of shared interest.
The first Bayer Fellowship was awarded to Sonia Caprio, M.D., associate professor of pediatric endocrinology. Caprio studies the underlying metabolic changes associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes in children and adolescents.