AJ Russo

Recently retired from full-time teaching, A.J. was a professor and researcher at Mount Saint Mary’s University in Maryland, Hartwick College and Drew University. He is currently the Research Director of Mensah Medical Research Institute, in Warrenville, Ill. He has over 35 years of research and teaching experience. His bachelors’ degree in Biology is from Hobart College in Geneva, NY. His Masters in Biology and Ph.D. in Experimental Pathology are from Roswell Park Memorial Institute, a division of the State University of New York in Buffalo. After graduate school, he did postdocs as a staff fellow at the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Department of Dermatology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He was the Class of 1964 Endowed Professor from 2006 to 2008 at Mount Saint Mary’s. His research over the past twenty years has focused on studying autism and other behavioral disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety, and depression. AJ was the head lacrosse coach at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) from 1973-75 before going to graduate school. He was the assistant lacrosse coach at Mount Saint Mary’s from 1985 to 88, then was the head lacrosse coach from 1989 to 1993. AJ has written more than a dozen novels and many short stories. He published a sports column in several local papers in Maryland called Outside the Game. Recently he published seven Op-Eds in the Baltimore Sun. When he is not watching Orioles and Ravens games, he can be found writing, coaching youth lacrosse, or jogging very slowly around town.