Rate My Professor Marc Russo

Dr Marc Russo serves as Conjoint Associate Professor in the School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy and Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Medicine and Public Health within the College of Health, Medicine and Wellbeing at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A Specialist Pain Medicine Physician, he earned his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from the University of Sydney and holds additional qualifications including DA (UK), FANZCA, and FFPMANZCA. Since 1999, Russo has been in clinical practice, treating over 20,000 patients with acute and chronic pain conditions through a multidisciplinary approach. He founded Hunter Pain Specialists (formerly Hunter Pain Clinic) in 1999, Hamilton Day Surgery and Hunter Specialist Medical Centre in 2001, Genesis Research Services (formerly Hunter Clinical Research) in 2005, and Sydney Pain Specialists in 2016. He co-founded the Innervate Pain Management Program and NAPS (Newcastle Anaesthetic Peri-operative Services). Russo is renowned for performing multiple world-first spinal cord stimulator device implants in 2011 and conducting first-in-human clinical trials.

His academic interests encompass chronic pain, neuromodulation, neuropathic pain, pain medicine, and spinal cord stimulation. Russo has authored over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters, including "Vagus nerve stimulation for the management of chronic pain" (2025), "Systematic review and meta-analysis of conventional medical management in refractory chronic pain" (2025), "Gabapentin—Friend or foe?" (2023), and numerous others on neuromodulation and pain therapies published in 2025-2026. He has led or participated in over 80 clinical trials, with special interest in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). As an investigator on the NHMRC Ideas Grant (2023-2025) for network-level decoding of touch and pain in the spinal cord and lead on the ANZCA Project Grant (2022) for immune-to-brain signalling in CRPS, Russo contributes significantly to pain research. Professionally, he is Immediate Past-President of the International Neuromodulation Society, Director at Large of the Neuromodulation Society of Australia and New Zealand, Deputy Chair of the NSW Regional Committee of the Faculty of Pain Medicine (ANZCA), examiner for the Faculty, and serves on multiple ANZCA committees. He also holds the position of Honorary Associate Professor in the Department of Anaesthesiology at the University of Hong Kong.