Dr. Vitali Koch obtained his doctorate at the Heidelberg University in 2013.
He is a fourth-year resident in radiology and a board-certified cardiologist at
Frankfurt University Hospital, Germany. His research focuses on MR elastography
and CT post-processing. His skills and expertise mainly include computed
tomography, magnetic resonance, biomarkers, diagnostic radiology, internal
medicine, cardiology, and imaging.
Prof. Dr. Arnie Purushotham has been a Consultant Academic Surgeon for 26
years, having worked in Glasgow, Cambridge, and London. He is a Professor of
Breast Cancer at King’s and a Consultant Surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas NHS
Foundation Trust. He is also the Director of King’s Health Partners
Comprehensive Cancer Centre. As a scientific researcher, his goal has been to
drive high-quality clinical and translational research that directly impacts
patients with cancer. Key areas of research are patterns of metastatic spread,
novel optical intra-operative imaging, MR Elastography to predict response or
resistance to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, window of opportunity trials,
prevention, and early detection, cancer in low- and middle-income countries,
and cancer outcomes.
Prof. Dr. Valérie Paradis is an MD PhD and Professor in Pathology, is the
chairman of the Pathology department (Beaujon hospital) and leader of the
INSERM team ‘From inflammation to neoplasia in digestive diseases’ (INSERM UMR
1149 Paris). Her Fields of interest and research include pathological and
molecular aspects of liver tumorigenesis with a specific interest in
hepatocellular carcinomas developed in patients with metabolic syndrome. Her
team has developed an original in situ proteomic approach (MALDI imaging) for
the identification of tissue biomarkers, and an ex vivo culture model of human
tumor slices for the evaluation of therapeutic molecules. She is involved in
educational activities, chairing the specialty “Epithelium: interface
structure” (Master 2 “Cellular biology-Physiology-Pathology”). She is
co-coordinator of the DHU UNITY ‘ U met N eeds for innovation in Hepatology and
Gastroenterology Y' and task leader (WP2: cross-sectional clinical study)) of
the RHU QUID-NASH aiming to identify innovative noninvasive diagnostic markers
of NASH in diabetic patients.
Dr. Radhouene Neji is a Senior Lecturer in MR Physics at the School of
Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences. He has several years of experience
in the medical imaging industry as an application developer, clinical
scientist, and team leader. His research focuses on the development of novel MR
pulse sequences and reconstruction methods for cardiovascular MRI, MR-guided
neurosurgery, MR elastography, and cancer imaging. He is particularly
interested in the clinical translation of these methods into robust technology
that can be used routinely in the clinic.
Dr. Ralph Sinkus received his doctorate in high-energy physics at the DESY,
Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Hamburg, Germany. After his PhD (1997), he
took a position at Philips Medical Systems Research Laboratories in Hamburg,
Germany. His focus of research was in the domain of MRI and in particular in
the field of MR elastography (MRE). In 2004 he decided to leave industrial
research to further develop his academic career. He followed a call to the
“Laboratoire Ondes et Acoustique”, ESPCI, Paris, France, and was offered a
3-year position as research director (CNRS) to establish an MRI group. In 2007 he obtained a permanent position as
research director at CNRS. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical
Engineering at King’s College London and Research Director CNRS at INSERM,
Paris. His current research activities are mainly focused on the assessment and
understanding of biomechanics within the human body for disease
characterization and therapy efficacy evaluation by using MR and ultrasound
elastography. This interest goes far beyond the “plain” measurement of tissues’
viscoelastic properties but reaches out into fundamental physics, such as
anomalous wave propagation in fractal-like media and apoptotic cellular
processes triggered via mechanotransduction.
