Ronald Nutt

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Ronald Nutt

Ronald Nutt

CEO, Advanced Biomarker Technologies

Education

  • B.S. 1961, Electrical Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • M.S. 1962, Electrical Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville
  • Ph.D. 1969, Electrical Engineering, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Nutt is CEO of Advanced Biomarker Technologies, a company dedicated to developing molecular imaging biomarkers. In 1983, he co-founded and was a member of the Board of Directors of CTI Molecular Imaging. He was vice president of Research and Development from 1983 through 1998 when he became president of CTI PET Systems, a joint venture between Siemens and CTI. In 2002, he became president and CEO of CTI Molecular Imaging, Inc., a NASDAQ public company. Nutt led negotiations with Siemens during the sale of the company in 2005 and assisted in the integration of CTI into Siemens through May of 2006. Nutt has more than 30 patents in the field of molecular imaging, authored and co-authored a large number of technical publications, and has presented at many conferences. Prior to founding CTI Molecular Imaging, Nutt was co-founder of other companies including Technology for Energy Corporation, Radio Systems Corporation, and Delta M Corporation. As vice president of EG&G ORTEC between 1969 and 1979 he was responsible for developing many innovations in the field of nuclear physics instrumentation. Prior to ORTEC, he was a researcher at ORNL and taught electrical engineering at the University of Tennessee.

Nutt is an IEEE Fellow. In 1999, IEEE named him Outstanding Engineer for the Eastern U.S. for his contributions to molecular imaging and the Academy of Molecular Imaging named him Scientist of the Year. In 2000, the PET/CT invention, which Nutt co-created, was named Medical Invention of the Year by Time. Additionally, he was awarded an honorary MD by the University of Essen in Germany in 2008.

Nutt served as a UT Chancellor’s Associate and is a member of the Tickle College of Engineering’s Campaign Executive Committee. The Nutt family established three major endowments at UT. In 1998, the Randall Keith Nutt Engineering Scholarship Endowment was established in honor of Nutt’s son who passed away after completing his freshman year in electrical engineering. The Nutt family also established the Ronald Nutt Fellowship in Image Formation and Processing and the Ronald Nutt Family Engineering Scholarship. Nutt, in conjunction with fellow alumni and former CTI Inc. founding partners Michael Crabtree, Terry Douglass, and Kelly Milam, established the CTI Chair in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science.