Farewell to Mr. Anup Bidesi and the week of Oct. 10-14

Mr. Anup Bidesi is leaving us to take a job offer in Sydney, Australia. A farewell dinner with him and HW Jung on Oct. 7 was a small but good one. I feel that I, the Center, and the School have just made a new friend abroad. The rest of the week was busy but less hectic than the past few weeks. Finally I have some time to work on the revision of the nuclear susceptibility shift paper in MRM. I also can take some time to look after the undergraduate students' research, and think about putting up an ad for Mr. Anup's replacement.

Reflections from the QSM workshop

The 4th International Workshop on MRI Phase Contrast and QSM was held in Graz, Austria, from September 25th to 28th. I arrived at Graz at night on Sunday 9/25, presented a poster on Monday, a talk on Wednesday, and promptly flew back to Incheon airport overnight. The conference was attended by about 100 people. They said that the number of posters presented, which was about 60, was higher than before. A few interesting things that I recall:

1. There was a break-out session to discuss current issues in QSM. The four topics were: Use of a reference tissue in QSM, Unmet/unsolved needs in QSM, Best pulse sequence in QSM, and SWI vs QSM for clinical impact. No clear conclusions were drawn, of course, which provided a valuable insider's look on what is still to be done.
2. The conference booklet was marked with "Confidential", with note that the abstracts could be for publication elsewhere, in an obvious effort to protect authors' choice to publish in a more official way.
3. South Korean participation was counted as 8, which was noted by the organizers as being high. Presentations from the three Korean speakers on the 3rd day, from me, Prof. Dong-hyun Kim, and Prof. Jongho-Lee, were all strong. After all, Prof. Jongho Lee spearheaded the decision to hold a 2019 QSM workshop in Korea.

For the scientific contents, the following were noteworthy.
1. No follow-up work presentation was made on some of the novel MREPT methods, including CSI(contrast source inversion)-EPT and cr(convection-reaction)-EPT.
2. Dr. Bilgic presented fast QSM acquisition which appeared very powerful.
3. SQUID susceptometer was used to characterize magnetic properties of tissue iron including ferritin at low temperature. Prof. Heinz Krenn from Graz presented on SQUID and low-field MRI. Of course I introduced myself and chatted with him.
4. Nothing on Habenula either.
5. Karin Shmueli from UCL, UK showed that localized QSM results are not very sensitive to whether the whole-brain is covered.
I would say that the Workshop was a success overall, although there was not really a major breakthrough.

IBS Conference

Today was the second day of the IBS Conference on Systems Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, held at the SKKU Suwon campus. There were 4 speakers in the morning, and 5 in the afternoon. The talks were delivered by MRI celebrities, with focus on basic science, including: Seiji Ogawa, Joseph Ackerman, Alan Koretzsky, Ralph Freeman, Zang-Hee Cho, John Gore, Robert Turner, and Eliot Stein. There were maybe 100 to 150 in the audience. The turnout was not great but those who attended looked engaged and satisfied. A few things I learned from today's sessions were:

- Dr. Ogawa is interested in looking at fMRI studies on the effect of education, including musical training.
- Dr. Cho showed his radius-adjustable and wobbling PET detector system.
- Dr. Gore discussed neuronal tracking using Mn particles (Mn oxide moves along the axon and across a synapse); Prof. Kim Hyung later explained to me that its physical mechanism is unknown.
- Dr. Turner mentioned that current psychology studies are skewed by the dominant white population in the industrialized countries. Dr. Turner also showed a couple of slides on high-field (7T I believe) QSM in human brain.

The most intriguing to me was the discussion of Dr. Gore about white matter tractography based on functional correlation between neighboring voxels. This appeared very elegant, and I wonder why I never heard about this before.

Fall Semester began!

Easy to remember, the academic calendar for the 2nd semester of 2016 follows very closely the one for the 1st with a 6 month delay. The start of the semester was therefore 9/1, and the end of it will be on 12/21. The week of September 1st was another busy and interesting one for the BME friends and colleagues. We had

- An opening ceremony for the BICS institute in the N Center, with a nice buffet dinner in the gallery area, open to the BME students,
- A research introduction seminar with the Founding director of BICS, Prof. Kataoka, followed by a nice dinner at an upscale restaurant,
- And of course all the hustles and bustles of the start of a semester with undecided students and panicking professors over course registrations.

Also, we have hired a Lab technician to operate the Machine shop on the 1st floor. Welcome to Mr. Cheon, Jin Whan!

Week of August 15-19

Last week was a short one, with the 15th being a national holiday, and it was also a very busy one. I had several businesses where I had to handle a pair of things -- I interviewed two candidates for the Lab Technician position, submitted two 1-page Abstracts to the QSM workshop, prepared two graduate class syllabuses, and worked on editing two manuscripts. One of the two manuscripts was submitted this Monday to MRM. The other one, on projection reconstruction, is still some time away before submission. The class plans took time to come up with, and they turned out okay, but I now learn that one of them will likely not have enough registered students to stay open next semester. The candidate interviews went smoothly, and now we know who to hire. The QSM workshop, in Austria, will happen on a week where there will be (1) IBS symposium, (2) (I learned today) a visit to Queensland, Australia by high University officials including the Chancellor.
Good progress, and we sent off Seul-ki, the summer intern student, to where she currently goes to school with a good lunch on Friday.

Summer in SKKU

Summer is still in full swing! The heat and humidity of the past several days were very uncomfortable. The forecast is not promising for those waiting for cool air. The campus is markedly quieter, with many undergraduate students out of town, summer programs largely wrapped up, and faculty and staff members having days off from work. In CNIR, the new, air-conditioned building is  providing a good shelter for those who would rather sit and type and read in the summer, with no better place to be in. The 3 T MR scan room on the 1st floor is particularly inviting, with constant temperature and humidity control, and not much usage by external users. Well, what about a summer retreat to MRI? 

Summer research

Summer is in full swing. Today was the hottest of the days so far this year. Four weeks have passed since the start of the summer vacation on campus, and the Center's first Summer Intern Program ended today with a great success. Success in terms of the engagement of the participating students, logistics, publicity, communication, and future recruiting.
It so happened that my lab was the only one (out of 7) with two separate research projects for the two students. Four weeks is not a long time for a research with any level of completeness. I like the summer program name "Summer Immersion" of Cornell - it is an intensive activity with much focus required, from decision making to execution. The two research topics, one on in-vivo brain R2* and the other on phantom susceptibility, were well digested by the students and the time spent was well worth it.