Dr. Reimund Bayerlein, an Assistant Project Scientist based at the University of California, Davis, has been awarded a second 2-year NIH R03 research grant as Principal Investigator to investigate artifacts caused by artificial intelligence (AI)-based image enhancement tools in positron emission tomography.

SNMMI’s Ones to Watch campaign is a showcase for rising talent in the field, offering a platform to increase recognition for early career professionals within our specialty. As the field continues to expand, a new wave of talent is at the forefront. This is the 8th year of the SNMMI One’s to Watch program. The concept originated from the Early Career Professionals Committee in 2018 and the first group of Ones to Watch were announced in spring 2019.

Dr. Brahim Mehadji received a UC Davis STAIR HEALTH Proof-of-Concept Grant in support of his project, Precision PET Probe: Revolutionizing Minimally Invasive Cancer Surgery. 

The EXPLORER Molecular Imaging Center is delighted to congratulate Dr. Lorenzo Nardo, Professor of Radiology at UC Davis Health, on receiving the Drs. Jane and Abass Alavi Mars Shot Research Award at the 2026 SNMMI Annual Meeting.

Dr. Yansong Zhu has been honored with the First Place PIDSC Young Investigator Award at the 2026 SNMMI Annual Meeting, the premier annual gathering of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging professionals worldwide. Yansong's work, "Super-resolution PET-enabled dual-energy CT imaging with application to different radiotracers," was selected as one of six finalists from a competitive pool of nearly 300 submitted abstracts and ultimately received the top distinction.

Assistant Project Scientist Siqi Li has developed a practical method for generating high-quality parametric images from clinical total-body scans without increasing scan time and costs. The approach, called the relative Patlak (RP) plot, eliminates the need for early-time input data traditionally required by the standard Patlak model. Combined with a self-supervised deep-kernel noise reduction method, the technique allows accurate tracer kinetics to be derived from short clinical scans.

The EXPLORER Molecular Imaging Center and the Department of Radiology had another great showing at the UC Davis Research Expo! Thanks to Dr. Benjamin Spencer, Technical Director of the EXPLORER Molecular Imaging Center and Assistant Professor in the Department of Radiology, and Ekatarina Shanina, PhD Candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, for representing our Department and Center!

Experiments on the Feasibility Evaluation of a long axial field-of-view PET scanner for non-human primates have been presented at the IEEE Medical Imaging Conference 2016 in Strasbourg, France. 

Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi have received a $15.5 million, 5-year NIH Transformative Research Award to lead the consortium that is tasked with the development of EXPLORER, the world's first Total-Body PET scanner (R01 CA206187).