The Molecular Imaging and Nanotechnology Laboratory (mi.wisc.edu) had another successful year at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) Annual Meeting in San Diego this past June. They received multiple awards,
including two Cai Group members, Christopher G. England and Shreya Goel, receiving Travel Awards to attend the meeting. There were only 15 Travel Awards given this year (another awardee from UW-Madison was Hector Valdovinos, a graduate student in Medical Physics). In addition, Reinier Hernandez and Sixiang Shi also each received a UW-Madison Conference Presentation Funds Student Research Travel Grant to attend the meeting.
There are many Young Investigator Award (YIA) Symposiums at the SNMMI Annual Meeting, where the highest-scored abstracts were chosen to compete in the symposium. Three of the Cai Group abstracts were chosen to compete in three different YIA Symposiums, and Christopher G. England received a 1st place in the Cardiovascular Council YIA Symposium.
At the meeting, the Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (CASNMMI) had a competition for a Young Scientist Award, and a former Cai Group postdoc Haiming Luo, now a postdoc at Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital, received the 2nd place prize for his work performed in the Cai Laboratory.
Sixiang Shi and Haiming Luo both received the SNMMI Alavi-Mandell Award for their 2015 publications in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, official journal of SNMMI.
At the SNMMI Annual Meeting there are several summary sessions and highlight lectures where leaders in the field summarize the best abstracts presented at the Annual Meeting. Many of the Cai Group abstracts were presented in the highlight lecture, which covers a diverse scope of research areas including oncology, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes.
Additionally, Professor Cai himself co-organized and co-moderated four Continuing Education sessions, all of which were well attended.
Four Cai Group Members Receive RSNA Travel Awards
Four members of the Cai Research Group attended the 2016 Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) annual meeting in November and each received an award. Dawei Jiang, Shreya Goel, and Emily Ehlerding each received an RSNA Travel Award. Of all the young investigators who have been invited to share their work at the meeting, the top 400 have been offered the award.
Christopher England received a Travel Award to attend RSNA from Novus Biologicals, LLC, Colorado. In addition, he was selected to the Introduction to Academic Radiology for Scientists (ITARSc) Program at RSNA 2016.