Congratulations to Xiaoyu Duan, a PhD candidate in the Wang lab, who has received the Bradley-Alavi Fellowship from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. This fellowship supports outstanding trainees pursuing research in molecular imaging and nuclear medicine.

Xiaoyu’s fellowship project focuses on developing quantitative PET methods for assessing liver inflammation in metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). Her work aims to improve dynamic PET imaging protocols and extend kinetic modeling to multi-organ analysis using total-body PET, enabling more practical and informative imaging biomarkers for MASLD patients.

Xiaoyu previously published first-author work in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine 2025 and received the Runner-Up Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference 2024. This fellowship will support her continued research in parametric PET.

Xiaoyu is jointly supervised by Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Ramsey D. Badawi.

We are pleased to share that Dr. Kevin Chung has moved on to the next stage of his career, starting a faculty position as an Instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital / Harvard Medical School in February 2026. During his time in our lab, Kevin made impactful contributions to quantitative PET imaging and total-body kinetic modeling, while also generously supporting fellow team members in the Wang Lab as well as in the EXPLORER Center. We are especially excited that he will be joining the MGH Martinos Center at a time when total-body PET has recently been installed there, creating outstanding opportunities for future innovation.

Congratulations, Kevin! We are proud of all you have accomplished and wish you every success at MGH!

Recent NIH grant submissions in 2025 from Dr. Siqi Li (R01 application) and Dr. Kevin Chung (K99 application) received favorable peer-review feedback for projects in quantitative PET imaging and total-body kinetic modeling.

Congratulations to Siqi and Kevin on a well-deserved outcome reflecting substantial effort and thoughtful proposal development!

Dr. Guobao Wang receives the 2025 IEEE Freek J. Beekman Medical Imaging Technical Achievement Award for contributions to advanced image reconstruction and translational kinetic modeling on November 6th, 2025, at the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference in Yokohama, Japan.  This award is given annually by the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society to a mid-career individual who has made significant and innovative technical contributions in the field of medical imaging science.

(Photo credit: Ralf Engels)

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Chung — he received the first-ever Research Rock Star Award — Trainee Award from the School of Medicine, UC Davis Health.

Picture: Kevin accepting his award from Dr. Kim E. Barrett, the Vice Dean of Research at UC Davis Health SOM.

Kevin is a postdoctoral fellow jointly supervised Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Simon R. Cherry.

Kevin J. Chung, AJ Chaudhari, JE Lopez, TY Lee, N Omidvari, YG Abdelhafez, L Nardo, T Jones, RD Badawi, SR Cherry, G Wang. Total-body Multiparametric PET with High-temporal Resolution Imaging and Blood Flow Modeling of Non-diffusible Radiotracers. Accepted for oral presentation. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium & Medical Imaging Conference, Yokohama, Japan, November 2025.

Xiaoyu Duan, V Lyo, S Sarkar, V Medici, K Matsukuma, MT Corwin, T Jones, SR Cherry, RD Badawi, G Wang. Quantifying the Radiotracer Delivery Rate in Immune Organs to Assess Liver Inflammation using Total-Body PET. Accepted for poster presentation. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium & Medical Imaging Conference, Yokohama, Japan, November 2025.

Siqi Li, X Long, Y Lv, R Bayerlein, BA Spencer, L Nardo, J Qi, SR Cherry, RD Badawi, G Wang. Static PET Image Reconstruction Using A Pretrained Deep Kernel Method. Accepted for oral presentation. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium & Medical Imaging Conference, Yokohama, Japan, November 2025.

Anahita Tavakoli, Y Wang, L Nardo, E Puta, YG Abdelhafez, SR Cherry, RD Badawi, T Jones, G Wang. Impact of Time Delay Correction on Brain Kinetic Quantification Using Total-Body Dynamic PET. Accepted for poster presentation. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium & Medical Imaging Conference, Yokohama, Japan, November 2025.

Yansong Zhu, BA Spencer, AM Hernandez, JM Boone, G Wang. Parametric imaging of electron density and effective atomic number from PET-enabled dual-energy CT. Accepted for poster presentation. IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium & Medical Imaging Conference, Yokohama, Japan, November 2025.

Congratulations to Dr. Siqi Li for receiving an Innovative Development Award from UC Davis Academic Federation. This award provides a pilot grant for Siqi to develop “Generalizable Deep Learning for Improving Pediatric PET Imaging.” He proposes developing a deep kernel model using a high-quality dataset collected from the ultra-high sensitivity total-body PET scanner EXPLORER. Once trained, this model can be used for tomographic image reconstruction across various scanners for low-dose or fast pediatric PET imaging.

Huge congratulations to Dr. Kevin Chung for receiving the Niels Lassen Award at Brain & Brain PET 2025! This prestigious award is presented by the International Society for Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism to recognize an outstanding scientific contribution made by a young scientist at the brain meeting.

More details of this award-winning work can be found in his recent two publications in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Nature Communications.

This recognition highlights Kevin’s innovative contributions to brain PET imaging. His work is helping push the frontier of quantitative neuroimaging with total-body PET.

Kevin is jointly mentored by Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Simon Cherry. We are incredibly proud of you, Kevin — well deserved!

(photo credit: Takuya Toyonaga at Yale)

Congratulations to graduate student Xiaoyu Duan for successfully passing her qualifying exam on May 8, 2025. She is now a Ph.D. candidate! Her doctoral proposal focuses on developing methods to significantly improve the parametric PET/CT technique for imaging metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. Xiaoyu is jointly mentored by Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Ramsey Badawi. Her exam committee includes Dr. Simon Cherry (Chair), Dr. Mike Corwin, and Dr. Victoria Lyo.

Xiaoyu, we look forward to continuing to work together for more interesting research!

Dr. Siqi Li has been selected for the class of 2025 SNMMI Ones to Watch. Congratulations Siqi! This annual list of early career professionals recognizes those with the potential to shape the future of precision medicine across all spectrums of the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging.