Summer Internship Announced

Apparently emails have been sent out to the summer internship applicants who passed the selection process. First, welcome to Mr. Jung Hyun Uk and Ms. Yoo Seul ki, who will join my lab for 4 weeks in June-July! Overall the Center is satisfied with the Internship application turnout, with 34 students applying for 10 announced openings. The Center is admitting 12 of them, and there has been significant effort to make the selection process fair and reasonable. "Spread the word" is the spirit, and we should work to make this event fruitful and sustainable over the years.

Wednesday update, Singapore

Today was less humid. There was some rain in the afternoon, cooling the air a little bit, before the muggy air returned in a few hours.
1. My poster was attended by a couple of very interested researchers both from Western Ontario. They work on making an insert gradient coil and showed much interest in my PNS measurement with rotated head. They both said good words about Tom's ePoster on head-only scanner from yesterday, which I had missed. Later I went to the computer screen to look it up - the head-only ePoster was well presented.
2. I told a Siemens technical representative about the need to relax dB/dt limit on Prisma. We also discussed UTE options.
3. Lunch with Prof. Jaeseok Park.
4. Dinner with Prof. Seong-gi Kim's team.
5. Requested quote from Electric Geodesics on MR-compatible 32 ch sensor package.
6. Early morning educational session on QSM was helpful -- I asked the 1st speaker for his ppt slides by email.

Monday May 9th, 2016, Singapore

Update from the Meeting:
1. Dr. Seong-gi Kim's paper was displayed as the 5th most cited MRM paper published in 2013!
2. Dr. Erwin Hahn appeared on screen via Skype, to address the plenary hall audience! I was almost in tears to see him on the screen, positively to learn that he is still thinking clearly, but also by his visible sign of aging compared to when I last talked to him in Berkeley.
3. I delivered the 9+3 min oral presentation in a Session on Artifacts. I probably spoke too fast. A question was asked about the difference between this work and a Green's function sampling method. Later, I chatted with the questioner - he had an electronic poster, later in the day, about an alternative representation of the dipolar field kernel and its impact on QSM.
4. GE lunch time symposium had Eric Stahr showing one slide on head-only scanner delivered to Mayo Clinic. Exciting!
5. The MRM and JMRI reviewer session in the evening was very informative. Interesting to hear the JMRI Editor-in-Chief say that Discussion is the least important part when reviewing a manuscript. For MRM, Matt said the journal honors at most one of the preferred reviewers as suggested by the authors.

ISMRM 2016

This year's ISMRM meeting will be held in Singapore, from May 6th to the 13th. I am doing three different things this time - moderating, poster presenting, and an oral talk in a scientific session.

1. Moderation
This is the second time I am co-moderating a session in ISMRM. Each time, connections at GE have helped me be found by the Annual meeting committee for such a opportunity. Last year it was in a traditional oral session, on MRI systems calibration including B0 and B1 mapping. This time is different - it is for a day-long educational session. Pretty much a whole business day will be dedicated to this activity. It will be interesting though. I expect more of a housekeeping role than intervening in heated technical debates. The session is "Physics for Physicists", on Saturday.

2. Poster
This is on Wednesday, in a session on MRI safety. I have had some material prepared on PNS in an asymmetric head-only gradient coil last year. Unfortunately, since my departure from GRC this work was orphaned, and I seriously thought about cancelling this poster. At the last minute, however, I obtained from GRC old electronic files used to prepare the abstract, and was able to edit the content into a minimally acceptable poster. PNS research itself continues to have my attention. At the meeting I will try to see what new results are discussed from Brian Rutt's group on head gradient PNS.

3. Oral presentation
Last Friday I pretty much completed the content of the oral presentation on an improved method to compute the B0 inhomogeneity map from susceptibility distribution. The 3 undergrad students timed my practice talk, and I still need to complete one page with computation time data from the students. This talk will be on Monday morning, on "Artifacts: System Imperfections & Implants".