GE Research, Magnus, and NYTimes

 A first-ever, "Neuroscience conference" was held at the GRC Niskayuna campus on Dec 6-7. Dr. Tom Foo organized the whole thing, with many well-known (and busy) scientists from the academia attending the multi-day event in person. Alan Koretsky and Peter Bandettini were two of the invited neuro-experts who had in fact been involved in a Korean neuroscience center evaluation a few years ago. Tommy Vaughan was another big-name person who I had met while working in Korea. This conference was spurred by our MAGNUS gradient coil, which had just reached the record power for any head-only gradient coil at 3T the week before. Coincidentally and serendipitously, on the same day (Dec 6) GE had put out a full-page NY Time advertisement with a brain image obtained from MAGNUS (shown above to the left), as part of an unprecedented full-issue takeover of all the printed advertisement space for the day. With MAGNUS, we may be onto something.

icMRI 2022 and ISMRM 2023

 This year's official conference of KSMRM, icMRI 2022, was held in Seoul on Nov 4-5. I presented an invited talk via pre-recorded video, which was the first talk in an MR Engineering session. The talk, 30 min in all, was about dimensional analysis in gradient design based on my recent MRM publication with Matt Bernstein. The organizers posted the talk on-line including moderator introduction and closing remarks for 30 days, from which I was able to capture a few screenshots as shown above. Many thanks to Profs. Ahn Chang-Beom and Moon Chi-Woong for running the session!

Separately, the ISMRM abstract deadline was Nov. 11, and I submitted 3 first-authored works on magnetic damping, eddy current heating, and vector gradient field measurement. All involved a set of analytical equations, which have become my favorite ingredients in recent publications. A big change for the upcoming ISMRM meeting is that oral presentation time is reduced to 6 min, from 12 min. This will allow more abstracts to be selected for an oral, democratizing the conference in general.