Katarina Ruscic

About Katarina Ruscic

Katarina Ruscic is a physician-scientist, anesthesiologist, and intensivist at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. She serves as Senior Division Director for Multispecialty Anesthesia at MGH, where she leads multiple surgical services while continuing to practice anesthesiology and critical care medicine.

Dr. Ruscic leads a translational research program focused on the biology and physiology of the lymphatic system. Her work investigates how lymphatic vessels actively pump fluid through the body and how this process can be pharmacologically enhanced to improve human health. Using advanced imaging, molecular biology, and human studies, her laboratory studies the mechanisms that regulate lymphatic contractility and fluid clearance in conditions ranging from lymphedema to critical illness. She is the recipient of an NIH K08 early career award supporting this work. In addition to her research program, Dr. Ruscic is actively involved in mentoring trainees and developing new interdisciplinary collaborations that bridge basic science and clinical medicine.

Dr. Ruscic immigrated to the United States from Croatia. She completed three undergraduate majors at the University of Chicago and was a Goldwater Scholar and Howard Hughes Fellow. She remained at the University of Chicago to complete her MD-PhD through the Medical Scientist Training Program before moving to Boston, where she completed anesthesiology residency and critical care fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is now an attending physician. Her work aims to advance understanding of the lymphatic system and develop new therapeutic approaches that improve lymphatic function in human disease.