2020 fall undergraduate research presentation

This is the third time this year when undergraduate lab interns held a research presentation session. On the 21th of December, three students, Sung-Joon Yoon, Ji-Sung Barg, and Joon-Ho Kim each spoke about what they did and learned in the Fall semester. The session was held in one of the main lecture rooms of the N center, with 7 people in the audience seated far apart from each other, all wearing a mask. The presentations showcased the substantial involvement of the students in different lab projects, from RF coil design and electrical property measurements, to gradient coil theory. Holding this event in a physical place, rather than on-line, was a good idea in terms of enabling more lively discussions among the students.

7T MRI at KBSI

On Monday November 16th, Dr. Lee (SK) and two graduate students (HS Kim, BP Song) visited the Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) at Ochang. Dr. Sukhoon Oh kindly hosted the delegates to provide a tour of the MRI research building, in particular the human 7T scanner. Currently, Korea has three human 7T scanners (one in SKKU, from Siemens; another in Gachon Univ. also from Siemens, and the one in KBSI from Philips). Of these the ones in SKKU and KBSI are currently fully operational for human scanning. The KBSI scanner is being used for fMRI, extremities imaging, and RF hardware development. Compared to the SKKU scanner, it has more coil options including a diverse set of non-proton coils. A downside of the scanner is that Philips is not actively pursuing 7T imaging products, so the upgrade options are limited; however the scanner can be a good platform for basic science and engineering research at ultra-high magnetic field with human-sized bore space.