Richard Wahl MD

Richard L. Wahl, MD, is a professor at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and served as the director of MIR from 2014 to 2023. An alumnus, Wahl completed a diagnostic radiology residency and nuclear medicine fellowship at MIR. Before being named director at MIR, he was director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine at Johns Hopkins University and the first Henry N. Wagner Jr. Professorship recipient.

Wahl is a leader in using PET scans to diagnose human cancers and other diseases. He was among the first to harness the power of the immune system to precisely target radiation therapy to cancers, a technique that has become known as radioimmunotherapy. He has been at the forefront of efforts to combine quantitative data from multiple kinds of scans to form so-called fusion images that can help physicians more precisely diagnose and characterize cancers.

Wahl has received numerous awards, including the 2018 Georg Charles de Hevesy Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, where he served as president. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, the American Association of Physicians, and the National Academy of Medicine. A fellow of the American College of Radiology, Wahl holds 18 radiology patents and has published more than 450 peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts. He completed a research fellowship in immunology and earned his medical degree from the School of Medicine.