2019 year-end photo opportunities

Year-end parties for the department, IBS-CNIR, and the MRI laboratory provided photo opportunities in the latter half of December. Jun-Ho Kim, in particular, was featured in a university research news for his work on spherical phantoms, which also appeared in an external media.

Meeting with GBME undergraduate students

The medical devices faculty of the GBME department held an undergraduate student Q&A session on Friday Dec 20 in a meeting room at the N Center. About 25 students attended, a majority being freshmen, with strong interest to share questions and concerns about their academic and career matters with peers and the faculty. The session was the first of the kind in the department, and was run smoothly thanks to the very helpful advices, candid answers, and supportive comments from the professors including the department chair Jang-Yeon Park. It is hoped that this meeting would stimulate more dialogues in the future between the students and the faculty of the department, as the department moves forward into its 6th year of foundation in 2020.

KSMRM year-end meeting in Gwangju

A workshop and social gathering took place on December 6-7 in Gwangju, Jeollanam-do, celebrating the year's end among the PhD members of the Korean Society of the Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. Well-known for the exquisite culinary selections and traditions, the city of Gwangju was very well-received by the participants as an excellent choice for the venue of this event. A special thanks goes to Prof. Il-Woo Park, of Chonnam University, who took care of all the logistics of the two-day meeting. The workshop was held in a conference room inside the Chonnam University Hospital campus, and covered research lectures (Prof. Sung-Hong Park and others), society journal (iMRI) updates (Prof. Jaeseok Park), and discussions on next year's medical device funding from the Korean government (Prof. Yong-Min Chang). About 20 PhDs took part in the event, and had a good time exchanging professional information and personal greetings.

US military funding agency visit

A very interesting meeting was held on Friday, Nov 15th at the N Center, between the BME/CNIR researchers and delegates from the US military research funding agencies. The visitors represented all three services of the US armed force -- Air Force, Navy and Army. Many were based outside US, notably in Japan. Apparently they were on their way to visit a few different research institutes in Korea to promote funding opportunities for international collaboration and research support in basic sciences. A 45 min meeting with the PIs in the N Center was followed by a tour of the CNIR facilities, led by the Department Chairman Prof. J-Y Park. Kindly, Prof. J-W Son arranged the whole visit and drove many of the guests from Seoul to the SKKU campus in the morning. 

IBS Conference on Neuroimaging

A second IBS conference hosted by CNIR was held on Oct 11-12 in the Chemistry building on the SKKU campus in Suwon. The conference was funded by the IBS to host many renowned speakers from the US, Canada, Japan, and Europe. With famous names and free registration, the conference was well attended by local and domestic students and researchers. The 2-day conference was followed by the CNIR's annual Scientific Advisory Board meeting on Oct 14-15 at the N Center.

5th International Workshop on MRI phase contrast and QSM

Yonsei University hosted the 5th QSM conference on Sept 25~28. The meeting featured many "stars" in the field as speakers and discussion leaders, and was run very efficiently in a friendly environment on a convenient location at the heart of Seoul. The two organizers, Profs Jong-ho Lee and Dong-hyun Kim, should be credited for their hard work and effective fundraising. The CIEL lab graduate students attended the conference in full, with two posters presented on QSM in humans and phantoms. A few impressions from the conference are:

- There were no major new QSM processing methods announced.
- QSM recon challenge "rev 2" took a step back from the previous one, by using synthetic data instead of in-vivo real data, recognizing challenge in finding the ground truth.
- Much discussion was devoted to effects of micro-structure on QSM.
- Anisotropy was a popular discussion point.
- R2* and TKD method are not dying, for their artifact robustness.
- EPT (Electrical Properties Tomography) was all but covered by just one invited session. Although the tutorial lectures by U Katscher, JK Seo and others were very informative, EPT was a relatively minor component in the conference.

The 10th Annual Scientific Symposium on Ultrahigh-field MRI was held in Berlin, Germany yesterday. As Robin Heidemann summarized as the final speaker of the one-day workshop, the meeting was held on a beautiful campus with fine food and excellent presentations. It was run in a highly friendly and informal atmosphere, yet was run quite professionally. Eye-catching were the lecture room names (Axon, Synapse, Dentrit) of the building, and a grand piano that was actually played between sessions by the hosting researchers IN the lecture room. Scientifically, the symposium covered human and animal MRI at 7T and higher, with about half-and-half split between technical and clinical works. Some of the notable topics discussed were: thermal MRI (Berlin group), 10.5 T human body images (Minnesota), and prospect of 14T MRI (Mark Ladd). Siemens appears to be working on new gradient coils and higher power gradient amplifiers (between 2 and 3 MW). A good question: How can meetings like this happen in SKKU, where presenters and organizers are happy, enjoying and proud of their work, and focusing on information and not person?