Ingrid Burvenich

National Imaging Facility, Australia

Dr. Burvenich received her master's in bioengineering from the University of Ghent (Belgium) in 2001. She earned her PhD in radiopharmaceutical sciences from the University of Ghent in 2007, where she characterized monoclonal antibody 14C5 for molecular detection and therapy of αvβ5-expressing cancers. Subsequently, she joined the Tumor Targeting Laboratory of Prof. Andrew Scott at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute (Melbourne, Australia) as a postdoctoral researcher.As a senior research scientist, Dr. Burvenich possesses extensive experience in preclinical molecular imaging and biology, as well as in animal cancer models, targeted therapeutics, and cancer biology. She has played a pivotal role in the preclinical development of multiple bioimaging therapeutic antibodies, facilitating their translation into Phase I bioimaging studies. Since July 2021, she has held the position of National Imaging Facility Fellow for preclinical imaging utilizing PET/MRI 3T and SPECT/CT at the La Trobe-ONJCRI NIF node (Ingrid Burvenich, National Imaging Facility, anif.org.au).

Yaser Hadi Gholami

National Imaging Facility, Australia

Dr. Yaser Hadi Gholami is a physicist specializing in nuclear medicine and conducts extensive research in nanomedicine, radionuclide therapy and imaging, radiation physics and biology, nuclear chemistry, and Monte Carlo simulation. In 2019, he developed a groundbreaking theory for positron annihilation localization using nanoscale magnetization during his time as a visiting research associate at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).In 2020, he was honored with the prestigious 2020 Physics Grand Challenges award for his work on a quantum-medicine platform to study the quantum properties of cancer cells through positronium lifetime spectroscopy. Dr. Gholami's collaborations with Harvard Medical School and MGH have led to a novel chelate-free nanoparticle radiolabelling technique for PET/MR imaging and radionuclide therapy.He has collaborated with OncoSil Medical Company to develop personalized 32P microparticle therapy and contributed to achieving IDE approval. Additionally, in partnership with Varian, he has established a radiobiological modeling platform to gain valuable insights into temporal changes in tumor FDG distribution and tumor cell radiosensitivity.

Heidi Espedal

University of Western Australia

Heidi Espedal, PhD, is a research fellow at the University of Western Australia and a facility fellow at the National Imaging Facility (NIF). She specializes in PET-CT and MR imaging. Espedal was the head of the preclinical PET-CT facility at the Molecular Imaging Center at the University of Bergen in Norway for seven years. During her postdoctoral research, she focused on gynecological cancer imaging (PET-CT and MRI) in mouse models, and her doctoral research included PET and MR imaging projects related to orthotopic brain tumors and brain metastases in rodent models. In addition to cancer imaging, Espedal has collaborated on numerous projects involving physiology, tissue engineering, and petroleum imaging. Her primary research interests revolve around dynamic PET imaging, translational imaging, and the development of improved quantification methods.