Congratulations!
The PhD Award for excellent PhD thesis 2014 goes to Giuseppe Ferrauto from Torino for his thesis on “Development of highly sensitive probes for applications of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in molecular medicine” and to Pouyan Mohajerani from Munich for his work on “Robust Methods and Algorithms for Fluorescence Imaging and Tomography”.
Giuseppe Ferrauto from Torino for his thesis on “Development of highly sensitive probes for applications of Magnetic Resonance Imaging in molecular medicine”
“The most valuable achievements obtained in his three-year PhD project are the following:
i) In-depth characterization of the full Lanthanide (III) complexes of the HPDO3A ligand;
ii) First in vivo MRI observation of different cell populations labeled with PARACEST agents;
iii) Development of a highly-sensitive PARACEST agent for mapping pH in MR images (tumour region).
iv) Design and characterization of nanosized CEST systems (lipoCEST agents, CEST micelles, CEST mesoporous silica nanoparticles) ;
v) Design and Testing of cells as highly-sensitive CEST agents. This work has shown that an enormous improvement in sensitivity can be gained by exploiting all the water pool present in the cytoplasm compartment.Along the 4-5 years of our collaboration, several high-level scientific publications have been produced to which Dr Ferrauto has greatly contributed both in terms of the experimental design and data collection and of writing of the papers.
Silvio Aime – supervisor
I am convinced that the tenure of his Award will further consolidate his scientific independence through the focusing of new objectives that would open new horizons in his scientific career.”
Pouyan Mohajerani from Munich for his work on “Robust Methods and Algorithms for Fluorescence Imaging and Tomography”.
“In his Ph.D. work, several important achievements have been showcased for the first time. For example, Dr. Mohajerani used fluorescence to successfully demonstrate early tomographie imaging of arthritis in human finger joints (as published in 2014 in the journal Radiology). The presented FMT-PCCT technology constitutes the state-of-the-art in molecular optical imaging. Recent work of Dr. Mohajerani on frequency-domain techniques is expected to lead to a paradigm shift in the field of optoacoustic technology.
As a highly intelligent, motivated and professional scientist in command of exceptional theoretical and experimental skills, Dr. Mohajerani has become a leader in the field of fluorescence tomography. His work has produced some of the most important achievements in this area in the last few years, represented by 10 journal papers (in 7 of which he is first author). Additionally Dr. Mohajerani’s patented work has already been commercialized and is now in use in the industry.”
Vasilis Ntziachristos – supervisor
Winners 2014
The committee is considering Giuseppe’s work as particularly innovative and original – a creative novel approach. All have been impressed by Pouyan’s innovative method of data acquisition and technology, the focus on possible resulting applications, and by his ability to explain complex matters into understandable terms.