Pamela Woodard

Pamela K. Woodard is an American radiologist specializing in cardiovascular imaging. She is the Elizabeth E. Mallinckrodt Professor of Radiology and the Director the Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology at Washington University in Saint Louis. She also holds appointments as a professor of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Biomedical Engineering at the Washington University in St. Louis. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022.

Early life and education
Woodard was born in Newton, Massachusetts. She has said that she wanted to be a physician from the age of four.

Woodard completed her bachelor's degree at Duke University. She remained at Duke for her medical degree, before moving to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a one year internship. Woodard was a radiology resident at Duke, where she studied blood clots in the lungs. She revealed that these blood clots could be detected by spiral CT scans. She moved to Washington University in St. Louis as a cardiothoracic fellow. Her research considered diagnostic radiology, including positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging and CT scanning.

Research and career
In 1997, Woodard was appointed to the faculty at Washington University in St. Louis, where she established multi-detector CT scanning as the standard means to diagnose blood clots. Her research has concentrated on translating pre-clinical imaging to patients. She has developed atherosclerosis agents and PET radiotracers. These radiotracers can detect proteins that are associated with plaques, which can cause sudden heart attack and stroke, or monitor blood flow through heart muscles.

Woodard was named the inaugural Hugh Monroe Wilson Professor of Radiology in 2019. In 2021, she was named the Radiological Society of North America Outstanding Researcher of the Year. In 2022, Woodard was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and also elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She has been a standing member of 3 National Institutes of Health study sections, most recently serving as the Chair of the Imaging Guided Interventions and Surgery section. She has served on the Board of Chancellors of the American College of Radiology, and in April 2024, Woodard was elected as President of the American College of Radiology for 2024-2025.