Stephen Swensen

Career in Medicine

"...imaging that finds the cancer can now be used to guide the probe that will freeze it or fry it without requiring major surgery..."

Following college, Steve spent four years in medical school at UW-Madison; completed his four-year radiology residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; and then furthered his knowledge of chest diseases with a year-long stint at Harvard. After that, he returned to Mayo where he has been ever since.

At Mayo, he’s assumed a variety of roles over the years—clinical radiologist, researcher, teacher and administrator. Eight years ago he became chair of the radiology department, managing a $400 million budget and overseeing 1,200 employees, including 152 physician-radiologists. He’s headed up three National Institute of Health grants worth more than $10 million, designed to increase the ability to detect lung cancer in its early stages. Steve has guided a technological revolution in digital imaging that has vastly improved diagnostic and treatment capabilities. As a leader in the “highest of high tech fields,” he’s come a long way since that slide rule vote in freshman chemistry.

Steve is proud of the work he’s done at Mayo, and he can point to several publications he has authored that have genuinely advanced the medical community’s understanding of cancers and lung disease. “It’s due to the research that our teams have been involved with that science has advanced now, so that imaging that finds the cancer can now be used to guide the probe that will freeze it or fry it without requiring major surgery,” notes Steve. “There are a lot of exciting things happening in cancer research and many of them are in radiology.”