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.

This is also the first dedicated grant in our lab that focuses on pediatric PET imaging. Well done, Siqi!

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.

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Chung on having his paper (preprint) accepted by Nature Communications! The paper focuses on imaging blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability using high-temporal resolution dynamic PET enabled by EXPLORER and through advanced kinetic modeling. This method opens new directions to efficiently study the molecular permeability of the human BBB in vivo using the large catalog of available molecular PET tracers. Many potential applications can be further developed for imaging neurological and systemic diseases.

This paper marks a significant milestone in our lab’s long-term research efforts to explore the imaging of the molecular transport properties of radiotracers.

Kevin is jointly supervised by Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Simon Cherry. Also thanks to all collaborators for making this work possible.

Dr. Siqi Li received a two-year NIH/NIBIB R03 research award as Principal Investigator to develop the feasibility of Total-body PET Parametric Imaging using Relative Patlak Plot, also see the method described in his recent JNM paper. Congratulations to Siqi for your first grant!

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Chung for receiving a prestigious two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship from the American Heart Association (AHA). His project will develop Multiparametric PET Imaging of the Heart-Brain Axis. Kevin is jointly supervised by Dr. Guobao Wang and Dr. Simon Cherry. His mentoring committee also includes cardiologist Dr. Javier Lopez and neuroimaging scientist Dr. Audrey Fan.

Congratulations to our graduate student Xiaoyu Duan for receiving the Runner-Up in the Best Student Paper competition at the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference (MIC) in Tampa, Florida. Her paper “Quantification of [18F]FDG Delivery Rate for Liver Inflammation using Shortened Dynamic PET Imaging Protocols” develops a practical approach for using dynamic FDG-PET to assess liver inflammation. Xiaoyu is jointly supervised by Dr.  Guobao Wang and Dr. Ramsey Badawi.

Our lab had a good showcase at the 2024 IEEE Medical Imaging Conference in Tampa, Florida. Dr. Siqi Li, Dr. Yansong Zhu, Dr. Kevin Chung, and graduate student Xiaoyu Duan reported their recent work on PET image reconstruction or kinetic modeling at the conference.

Congratulations to Dr. Kevin Chung for receiving the Best Presentation Award for his talk at the 2024 Total-Body PET Conference in Groningen, Netherlands! Kevin is jointly supervised by Dr. Simon Cherry.

Kevin J. Chung, Abhijit J. Chaudhari, Lorenzo Nardo, Terry Jones, Moon S. Chen Jr., Ramsey D. Badawi, Simon R. Cherry, Guobao Wang. Total-Body Perfusion Imaging with High Temporal Resolution Kinetic Modeling of Early Dynamic 18F-FDG PET. Total-Body PET 2024 Conference, Groningen, Netherlands, September 19-21, 2024.

Congratulations to Dr. Quyen Tran for his work receiving the Best Poster Award at the same conference!

Quyen Tran, Victoria Lyo, Karen E. Matsukuma, Michael T. Corwin, Benjamin A. Spencer, Valentina Medici, Terry Jones, Simon R. Cherry, Ramsey D. Badawi, Souvik Sarkar, and Guobao Wang. Total-body parametric PET with free-state tracer kinetic modeling: application to imaging of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH) with 18F-FDG. Total-Body PET 2024 Conference, Groningen, Netherlands, September 19-21, 2024.