He developed a material that might be used to build an artificial retina, found a way to preserve follicles in a test tube so women might have babies after cancer treatment and took home a prize for one of the Army's top 10 inventions.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Alan Russell, a professor of chemical and bioengineering at University of Pittsburgh, with his family. From left: Hannah, 14; Vincent, 11; Christian, 7; Trevor, 5; mom Janice; Emily, 1. More profiles Today, Your Health presents its annual Dozen Making A Difference, focusing on 12 people in our community who are working to improve our health, our well-being and our futures. Visit our Dozen Making a Difference index page for links to the other profiles.

And that was just Alan Russell's scientific work this year.

As director of the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Russell was equally busy, recruiting six new faculty, including liver stem cell researcher Eric Lagasse; folding in a biotech company donated by industrial giant Rohm & Haas; and figuring out how to maintain a technological edge as California embarks on its new $3 billion stem cell initiative.

"This is a fun job," insisted Russell, who seems to thrive even as events and interests tend to pull him in different directions at once. Both scientist and administrator, "I probably work fulltime on each."

Born and raised in Manchester, England, Russell, 42, always seems to be at interfaces ---- between physical science and biology, between science and engineering, between academia and free enterprise.

He started out as a biologist, earning his doctorate in biophysical chemistry at Imperial College in London in 1987. He then crossed the interface known as the Atlantic Ocean to serve as a NATO research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he got involved in applied chemistry "and then slid into chemical engineering."

He joined Pitt in 1989 as an assistant professor of chemical engineering and in 1995 took over as chair of the chemical and petroleum engineering program. He and his wife, Janice, live in Pine with their five children.

Even his research specialty involves strange interfaces ---- the tricky business of attaching biological substances such as enzymes to polymers. By attaching an enzyme that tears apart nerve agents to a sponge-like polymer, for instance, he invented a sensor that turns color in the presence of nerve agents ---- the invention that the Army cited this year and helped him launch a successful biotechnology company, Agentase LLC.

"I spend a lot of time, both personally and administratively, finding ways to get different cultures to communicate with each other and do something useful," he said. That interest became fully engaged in 2001, when he became the founding director of the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

Under Russell's guidance, the institute is expanding beyond artificial organs to include biological approaches to repairing or replacing organs and tissues. It brings in $49 million of funding each year.

The new responsibilities forced him to scale back his own research, cutting back the size of his lab from 20 people to 10. But he never considered shuttering the lab.

The approval by California voters last month of a $3 billion bond issue to finance stem cell research could cause scientific talent to shift to the West Coast, but Russell is convinced that the McGowan Institute can remain competitive.

"We're ahead of California in this field," he explained. "We just have to stay there.

"As long as we keep moving, we'll be fine."