Awards and Honors: December 17, 2007

2007 IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Medical Imaging Travel Grant Winners Frances Lau, MS, Peter Olcott, and Guillem Pratx, MS, were awarded travel grants to present their novel and original work at the 2007 IEEE NSS-MIC (Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging) Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Frances Lau, MS, graduate student in the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL), gave an oral presentation at the 2007 IEEE NSS-MIC Conference on the different methods for simplifying the circuits in the data acquisition system she and her colleagues are developing for a 1mm3 resolution breast-dedicated PET system. Ms. Lau's research interests include circuits and devices for biomedical applications; she is currently working on the design and development of hardware for a breast cancer imaging PET system.

Peter Olcott, graduate student in the Bioengineering Department and member of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory, gave a talk at the 2007 IEEE NSS-MIC Conference entitled Data Acquisition System Design for a 1 mm3 Resolution PSAPD-Based PET System that describes the data acquisition architecture he and his colleagues are developing for a new PET mammography system. Because of his strong presentation skills and the rating of his presentation abstract as the fourth highest, Mr. Olcott was one of two runners up for the two Best Student Paper Awards, which recognize contributions to the fields of nuclear and plasma sciences. Mr. Olcott graduated with a BS in computer science from the University of California, San Diego, in 2003. This fall 2007, he expects to receive his MS from Stanford in bioengineering and, subsequently, to begin the PhD bioengineering program. His current research interests include the development of an intra-operative hand-held gamma ray camera (nuclear imager) for the surgical staging of cancer; data acquisition systems for application specific (PET mammography) PET systems; and a new PET detector design for high-field simultaneous PET/MRI imaging. Mr. Olcott adds the following: "I have a 3-year-old son, and I spend all of my free time being a new parent. I love to play tennis, softball, and basketball, and members of Lucas/Radiology are quite welcome to send me unannounced requests to play these sports."

Guillem Pratx, MS, doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and member of the Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory, was also awarded a 2007 IEEE Medical Imaging Travel Grant to present his work at the 2007 IEEE NSS-MIC Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mr. Pratx completed his undergraduate work in engineering at the Ecole Centrale in Paris, France. In the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), he is completing his dissertation research, which centers on the development of practical algorithms that exploit graphics processing units (GPU) for fast medical image reconstruction in ultra-high resolution PET systems under development at Stanford. In support of his work, he has received several awards, including the NVIDIA Fellowship, the Society of Nuclear Medicine Bradley-Alavi Student Fellowship, and the Stanford Bio-X Graduate Student Fellowship.

A picture from the IEEE Luau, from left to right: Peter Olcott's son; Peter Olcott; Arne Vandenbroucke, PhD; Frances Lau, MS; James Matteson, PhD (Univ. of California, San Diego); Craig Levin, PhD; Guillem Pratx, MS; David Starfield, PhD candidate (Univ. of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg); Yi Gu; and Paul Reynolds.

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