Speakers

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Pedro Brugarolas is an Assistant Professor working in the Department of Radiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brugarolas obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 2012 and pursued additional postdoctoral training in Neuroscience and Radiochemistry at the University of Chicago (1/2011 – 3/2017) and at the NIH (3-6/2017). Since 2017, Dr. Brugarolas leads a research laboratory at MGH focused on the development and translation of novel PET tracers for brain imaging.

Bart holds an appointment as Associate Professor at the University Medical Center Groningen’s Department of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, and a guest appointment at the University of Oxford. Bart trained in analytical chemistry and radiochemistry, with a PhD in radiopharmaceutical sciences. He joined the University Medical Center in Groningen, the Netherlands, in 2021. His research focuses on radiolabelled compounds for imaging and radionuclide therapy of cancer. With his research team, he develops novel radiolabelled compounds for imaging hallmarks of cancer (e.g. DNA damage and repair) and investigates the (radio)biology of cancer cells treated with therapeutic radionuclides.

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Patricia Iozzo, MD, PhD, Specialist in Endocrinology-Metabolism and in Nuclear Medicine, Research Director at the Institute of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council (IT), and Docent at the University of Turku (FI), has worked at prestigious foreign research institutions (USA, UK, FI), with ongoing collaborations. She has been recipient of numerous grants, tutor of >40 students, member of many Expert Panels, and invited speaker/chairman in multiple conferences. Her research is dedicated to obesity, type 2 diabetes, and their complications, with a life-course vision, and special interest in new imaging approaches to quantify organ-specific targets, as recently focused on gut signatures.

Dr. James is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Radiology and Neurology, within the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS). She received her BS in pharmacology and organic chemistry at the University of Sydney, where she also earned her PhD in pharmacology and was awarded the University Medal. She served as the co-chair of the World Molecular Imaging Congress in 2021 and has received numerous awards for her research, teaching, and mentoring, including the Suffrage Science Award from the Medical Research Council in the UK, and the Exceptional Mentor Award from the American Medical Women’s Association, and the Roger Tsien Award for significant contributions to the field of molecular imaging in the area of chemical biology.  Her research is focused on developing new PET tracers for detecting immune cells in the context of neurological diseases. As part of her work, Dr. James has translated multiple tracers to the clinic, many of which are patented and being used in clinical neuroimaging research studies at Stanford and around the world. She also co-founded a company called Willow Neuroscience which is focused on developing immune-targeted therapeutics and PET tracers.

Prof Kairemo graduated with a MSc (Eng) degree from Helsinki University of Technology (Chemical Engineering) in 1980 before undertaking medical training (MD (86), PhD (93)) at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He undertook specialist training in Clinical Chemistry (94), Nuclear Medicine (96), Health Care Administration (02) and Pharmaceutical Medicine (06) at Helsinki University Central Hospital. He had a post-doctoral research fellowship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 1989-93 in New York. Besides homeland Finland he is licensed medical specialist in Norway (1998), Sweden (2001) and Estonia (2010).

Prof Kairemo has held posts as Professor in Clinical Chemistry at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (1998-9), Professor in Nuclear Medicine at Uppsala University Hospital in Sweden (2001-5) and as Head of the Nuclear Medicine Division, Department of Oncology at Helsinki University Central Hospital (2004-9). In 2009-2018, he has been the Chief of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Radiotherapy (Theragnostics) at the Docrates Cancer Center, in Helsinki. Since 2015 he has acted as Visiting Professor in the Nuclear Medicine Department of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, TX; last visits in 2019, 2022 and 2023. Prof Kairemo has also held posts in industry, as Medical Director of CTT Cancer Targeting Technologies Oy (2001-6), Medical Director of Imanext Oy (2006-8) and Clinical Director at Advanced Accelerator Applications SA in 2009 (now Novartis Co.).

Besides a few patents prof Kairemo has published more than 250 original publications in peer-reviewed journals. He is the current President of the World Association of Radiopharmaceutical and Molecular Therapy WARMTH.

Research interests: Nuclear Oncology, Early Response Assessment with PET; Clinical Radionuclide Therapy, Precision Oncology by Targeted Radiotheragnostics

VK is a professor of functional neuroimaging. He is a pioneer of fMRI resting state imaging, ICA analytics and ultrafast physiological imaging. Leads the EU JPND consortium in the research of non-pharmacological methods in cooperation with Maiken Nedergaard. Focuses on wearable diagnostics, imaging and therapy for early glymphatic dysfunction. Recipient of the Nordic Radiologist Award 2023 and has collected 10 M€ research funding with collaborators thus far.

Professor Knuuti is the director of Turku PET Centre, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, and professor of cardiovascular imaging, Faculty of Medicine, University of Turku. He acts also currently an Administrative Director of InFLAMES Research Flagship.

Professor Knuuti’s main research field is noninvasive cardiovascular imaging especially using PET, SPECT, echocardiography, MRI and CT. The main research focus has been on coronary artery disease and heart failure. He has worked actively in European Society of Cardiology working groups, councils and guideline committees and European Association of Nuclear Medicine. He has 1168 WoS publications. His H-Index is 118.

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Dr. Iina Laitinen is a Senior Imaging Director at Antaros Medical, in Mölndal, Sweden. She has over 20 years of experience on preclinical and clinical PET, with 10 years within the pharmaceutical industry.

Iina has MSc in Biochemistry, and PhD in Clinical Physiology and Nuclear Medicine, Turku PET Centre, University of Turku. She did her post-doc and held the position as Director of Preclinical Imaging in Department of Nuclear Medicine, TUM, Germany in 2010-2015. She joined Sanofi-Aventis Frankfurt, Germany as Head of Multimodal Imaging for 2015-2020, and Antaros Medical at 2020.

Her current work at Antaros Medical focuses is on designing and conducting clinical studies with imaging endpoints for drug development, including developing novel imaging-based methods. Her recent focus is on metabolic imaging and insulin sensitivity, and main areas of interest are in obesity, metabolic and diabetic disorders and related complications.

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Dr. Guillermo Sánchez Delgado is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Granada, a researcher at the Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red de Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y Nutrición (CIBEROBN), and an adjunct instructor at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. He obtained his PhD in Biomedicine in 2018 from the University of Granada (Spain), under the supervision of Drs. Jonatan R. Ruiz, Angel Gil, and José Manuel Llamas. His doctoral research focused on the links between brown adipose tissue and various components of human energy balance, as well as the effects of physical exercise on brown adipose tissue volume and activity.

Subsequently, Guillermo joined Dr. Eric Ravussin’s lab at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center (USA), where he completed extensive postdoctoral training in translational research on human energy metabolism. After 2.5 years in the USA, he received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, which enabled him to move to Université de Sherbrooke (QC, Canada) for receiving advanced training in metabolic imaging under the supervision of Drs. André Carpentier and Denis P. Blondin.

Guillermo returned to the University of Granada in July 2024, where he has recently established an independent research laboratory focused on investigating the physiological regulation of human energy balance. His research centers on three main areas: a) characterizing physiological mechanisms that counterregulate changes in energy intake or expenditure; b) examining the role of short-term fluctuations in macronutrient balance in the pathogenesis of ectopic fat deposition and insulin resistance; and c) designing and evaluating novel therapeutic interventions to prevent or treat obesity.

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Jason Tarkin is a Wellcome Clinical Research Career Development Fellow & Honorary Consultant Cardiologist at the University of Cambridge. He serves on the Executive Committees of the British Society of Cardiovascular Imaging and the British Atherosclerosis Society, as well as the Steering Committee of the UK CARDIOvascular-Immune-Mediated Inflammatory Diseases (CARDIO-IMID) Network. He is also the UK Principal Investigator for the BHF-DZHK-DHF International Research Partnership ”PLAK-TALK” about intercellular communication pathways in atherosclerosis. His research group applies novel multi-modality imaging approaches, coupled with deep immune profiling and interventional studies, to discover new avenues for improved diagnostics, risk-stratification, and therapeutics in cardiovascular disease.

Professor Tavares graduated from the School of Health Technology of Porto (ESTSP-IPP), Portugal, with a Nuclear Medicine BSc (Hons.) degree in 2007. She has worked for over 15 years in clinical and preclinical radionuclide imaging and obtained a Master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal, in 2009, as well as, a PhD degree in radiotracer development from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Glasgow, UK, in 2011. Post-completion of her PhD, Dr Tavares took on a position as Image Processing Analyst and later Imaging Consultant at Molecular NeuroImaging (MNI), New Haven, USA. She joined the University of Edinburgh as the Head of the Preclinical PET Facility at the Edinburgh Preclinical Imaging (EPI) and a Research Fellow in PET Imaging. Currently, Adriana is a Professor with a Personal Chair on Translational Molecular Imaging at the University of Edinburgh, UK.

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Elin Trägårdh is a radiologist and nuclear medicine physician at Skåne University Hospital and professor of clinical physiology and nuclear medicine at Lund University. She has a main interest in developing AI-models to automatically interpret and quantify PET images.

Tor Wager is the Diana L. Taylor Distinguished Professor in Neuroscience at Dartmouth College, and the Director of Dartmouth’s Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience laboratory, the Dartmouth Brain Imaging Center, and the Dartmouth Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Professor Wager’s research centers on the neurophysiology of affective processes—pain, emotion, stress, and empathy—and how they are shaped by cognitive and social influences. One focus area is the impact of thoughts and beliefs on learning, brain function, and brain-body communication. Another focus is the development of brain biomarkers that track and predict affective experience, including pain and other clinical symptoms. A third focus is on statistical, machine learning, and computational techniques that provide a foundation for new models of the affective brain. Professor Wager’s laboratory conducts basic research in these focus areas and applies the resulting techniques and models to collaborative, translational research on clinical disorders and interventions. In support of these goals, Professor Wager and his group have developed several publicly available software toolboxes (see http://canlab.github.io). He also teaches courses and workshops on fMRI analysis and has co-authored a book, Principles of fMRI. More information about Dr. Wager and his lab’s activities, publications, and software can be found at http://canlab.science.