2017 wrap up

The year is winding down and an unmistakable winter weather is gripping the Suwon area. The Center this year has decided on a 7T human MRI purchase, and there was a significant increase in the research personnel in the human fMRI research area. In Dr. Lee's lab, the undergraduate research interns did an excellent job in their research presentations for undergraduate project contests (C-School) to grab a Grand prize for two semesters in a row. There was a significant progress in  collaborative research with MDs at SMC, led by Ms. Yoo, on QSM of neurological disease patients. Multiple international invited talks were delivered by Dr. Lee. For research publication, currently one paper is under revision at MRM, and another at Sci Rep (led by Prof. Park JY). Multi-orientation B0 and B1 research has taken off to a promising start in collaboration with Prof. Shim's lab (B0) and KBSI (Dr. Oh S-H, B1). Finally, a brand-new, lab-dedicated research/office space was secured in 2017 and is now being furnished for full use starting January.

Happy new year!

KSMRM PhD meeting

PhDs in the Korean Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine met at Korea Basic Science Institute (KBSI) in Ochang, about 100 km south of Seoul, on December 1st~2nd. The meeting featured short presentations from many of the principal investigators in the Society, making this a good opportunity for everyone to learn current MR-related projects that are on-going in Korea. The Society is relatively small, but is growing, and one thing that was easy to see in the meeting was that there are a healthy group of young researchers in MR physics and engineering, taking over from an older generation of scientists who pioneered MRI research in Korea from the very early days of MRI. The hosting institute is home of the 2nd 7 Tesla human MRI scanner in Korea. So there was a short tour of the 7T facility in the evening of Dec 1st. The scanner, from Phillips, appeared to be in good shape and well taken care of. It was said that the team wanted to expand research more in the direction of fMRI-based human brain disorder studies.

PIERS 2017, Singapore

PIERS stands for Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium, an annual conference dedicated to research in fundamentals and applications of EM physics and engineering. This year's conference was held in Singapore from 11/19-22, and Dr. Lee gave an invited talk at a session on E&M in MRI, organized by Drs. Tommy Vaughan and Shaoying Huang. The conference itself was well attended, with reported abstract submissions counting over 1700. With such diverse areas of E&M applications (pretty much covering all engineering in modern days!), the parallel sessions were  many and individual sessions were uncrowded. About 5 sessions, including E&M in MRI, were closely related to biomedical engineering. MRI itself was not a main subject in the conference, but the few bio-oriented sessions featured diverse laboratory-scale engineering projects that could potentially fit the SKKU BME department.

MRI-C.I.E.L.

Magnetic Resonance-Inspired Creative Ideas and Experiments Laboratory, or, Crazy Ideas and Experiments Lab (CIEL) is taking shape slowly in the new space, with half of the furniture delivered last week. The room is now awaiting plumbing and electrical wiring work before the rest of the (big) furniture arrives. Much of the relatively small-scale experimental preparation work which is currently done in the 1st- floor workshop will get moved to the new room, probably early next year. Crazy ideas are welcome!

Scientific Advisory Board Meeting

The Scientific Advisory Board meeting was held on Thursday-Friday last week. This is probably the most important official event held this year for the Center. 5 external scientists, 4 from the US, visited for a two-day event featuring faculty seminars and break-up sessions for interviews. The interview part was an interesting one in which graduate students and research fellows were all invited for small-group Q&A sessions, discussing not research, but the Center's operation. The seminar session, occupying most of Thursday, was good for everybody to learn what other groups in the Center are up to. Repeated questions raised by the Board, as well as by ourselves in a wrap-up, are (i) how to define a grand theme of the research for the whole Center, (ii) how to attract talents to work here, and (iii) how to balance global and local (Korean) ways to operate the Center in terms of culture and language. Many who participated in the Meeting came away with an impression that the Center is now more stable and generally on the right track, compared to last year.

New template-based layout for MRM

Magnetic Resonance in Medicine has conducted a poll over switching to a new article layout, and the results are in. The decision was made to make the switch (some time soon). The new format apparently follows one of the standard templates of the publisher, and will speed up typesetting for accepted manuscripts. The new format features larger line spacings and less crowded letters. The downside is increased page count, by maybe about 20%. The change speaks to the pressure on the academic journals to make a rapid turnaround in the publication process. This undoubtedly reflects a fast pace and increasing number of players in academic research. It is hoped that this latest move by MRM will help attract high-quality paper submissions by more authors.

It's official: human 7T

This week it was made official that the Center is going to purchase a human 7T scanner from Siemens. The system, known as Terra, has recently been approved for clinical use in Europe. The clinical use as approved will be limited to a single transmit RF chain, which is problematic for body imaging, which in turn indicates that Siemens is envisioning marketing 7T for neuro applications primarily. The Center's human 7T research is finally taking off. The delivery is expected by September 2018.  That will be a 3rd 7T installation in Korea, following NRI (Gachon Univ., 2005) and KBSI (2015, also see here).