WMSG board members

Chairman: Alex MacKay 2009-11
University of British Columbia
Alex is a professor in the Department of Radiology and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. He is also the Director of the UBC MRI Research Centre. His research interests are to use MR to make specific measurements of brain pathology. His favourite techniques are T2 and T1 relaxation which, surprisingly, are still not well understood in brain

Scientific Director: Derek Jones 2008-10
Derek is Professor and Director of MRI at the Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre (CUBRIC), Cardiff University, Wales, UK. His interests have been developing methods to study the white matter of the human brain for over a decade. The main focus has been on diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging (DT-MRI). Current research interests include combining multi-spectral structural (diffusion-based metrics, relaxometry, magnetization transfer and volumetric) data with multi-spectral functional (MEG, fMRI & EEG) data.  

Secretary: Sean Deoni 2009-11
- Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (aka FMRIB) and the Centre for NeuroImaging Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London
- Research: DESPOT

Member: Hugo Vrenken 2008-10
After obtaining Master’s degrees in Experimental Physics and in Applied Physics at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, Dr. Vrenken performed his PhD research in the field of quantitative MR imaging in multiple sclerosis, at the MS Center Amsterdam, under supervision of Professors Barkhof, Castelijns, and Polman, and Dr. Pouwels. He is currently employed as a senior investigator at the VU University Medical Center, applying quantitative and qualitative MR techniques and image analysis techniques in the fields of multiple sclerosis and dementia.

Member: Bruce Pike 2009-11
Bruce Pike is the Killam Professor of Neurology & Neurosurgery and James McGill Professor of Biomedical Engineering at McGill  University.  He is also Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre at the Montreal Neurological Institute.  Dr. Pike investigates MRI methods and applications for basic and clinical neuroscience  research.  One of his research themes has been the investigation of  physiological modulations associated in neuronal activation and  inhibition in health and disease.  He has also developed in vivo quantitative magnetization transfer (MT) imaging techniques that probe the magnetic interaction between macromolecules and water and applied the technique to the study of demyelination and remyelination in multiple sclerosis (MS).  Dr. Pike has published more than 100 scientific papers and book chapters.

Member: Claudia Wheeler-Kingshott 2010-12
Senior Lecturer in MR Physics, Dept of Neuroinflammation, UCL Institute of Neurology

Member: Klaus Schmierer 2010-12
Klaus is a HEFCE Clinical Senior Lecturer in Neuroimmunology at the Blizard Institute of Cell and Molecular Science (Barts and The London School of Medicine & Dentistry) and a Consultant Neurologist at The Royal London Hospital. He has a special interest in demyelinating diseases, particularly multiple sclerosis (MS). Klaus' research uses MRI and histopathology to better understand MS pathogenesis, and to validate MRI techniques in order to improve (i) MS drug development and (ii) the management of people with MS in clinical practice. Further interest include atypical manifestations of demyelination, gene-environment interacitons in MS, and clinical trials.

Student Representative: Emily Wood 2011-12

Webmaster <not a board member>: Thorarin Bjarnason 2007-8
Thor is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary in Canada with the ImagingInformatics research group. Thor is interested in imaging and image processing in white matter. His main focus is processing multicomponent T₂ relaxation data.

Alumni:

Student Representative: Rebecca Samson 2010-11
Rebecca completed a PhD under the supervision of Prof Paul Tofts at the UCL Institute of Neurology, focusing primarily on quantitative Magnetisation Transfer (qMT) imaging in the brain. She is currently working as a PostDoc at the UCL Institute of Neurology under Dr Claudia Wheeler-Kingshott and has continued to pursue research in the field of quantitative MRI, with a focus on multiple sclerosis. Her recent work has included the implementation of Diffusion Tensor Imaging of the optic nerves at 3.0T as well as quantitative relaxometry and qMT imaging, lesion probability mapping in MS, and most recently the investigation of parallel RF transmission in MTR mapping in the brain.

Member: Stefan Ropele 2007-9

Student Representative: Shannon Kolind 2009-10
Shannon completed her PhD in Physics under the supervision of Dr Alex MacKay at the University of British Columbia, implementing and developing multi-echo T2 relaxation at 3.0T as well as comparing T2 relaxation and diffusion metrics in white matter with afocus on MS. Shannon is presently pursuing a PostDoc under Dr. Heidi Johansen-Berg and Dr Sean Deoni at the University of Oxford. She has been a member of the WMSG for a millennia and helped organize the WMSG workshop in Vancouver.
 

Chairman: Greg Stanisz 2006-8
Greg's lab is in Sunnybrook Hospital, Toronto, Canada. His main research focus is presently twofold: 1) quantitative MRI including magnetization transfer, multicomponent T₂ relaxation and diffusion modeling; 2) MRI monitoring of stem cell therapies in spinal cord injury and stroke. He has an annoying habit of asking annoying questions

Program Director: Charles Guttmann 2006-8
Charles is the Director of the Center for Neurological Imaging at Brigham and Women's Hospital and an Assistant Professor in Radiology at Harvard Medical School. His main interest is the quantitative evaluation of normal and pathological states of the brain using MRI. Charles' research focusses on the understanding of the natural course of MS and of white matter disorders in the elderly. Using MRI findings as phenotypic descriptors and elucidating the relationship between brain morphological changes and functional deficits is particularly emphasized.

Secretary: Roland Henry 2006-8 
 
 
 
 
 

Student Representative: Ives Levesque 2008-9
Ives Levesque is a PhD candidate with Prof Bruce Pike at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre of the Montreal Neurological Institute, at McGill University in Montreal. His current work is focused on quantitative magnetization transfer imaging with application to multiple sclerosis, in tissue modeling and data acquisition.