Ryan O’Hare Doig

In 2017, Dr. Ryan O’Hare Doig was awarded his Ph.D in Neuroscience and Physiology at the University of Western Australia. His early research career focused on understanding the pathophysiology of injury to the central nervous system, with a key focus on spinal cord injury.

In 2019, Ryan was appointed as the Head of Spinal Cord Injury Research at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). Since then, he has developed a research programme with three distinct but overlapping themes of research utilising biomedical imaging: discovery, diagnostics, and therapeutics.

Through these themes Ryan has a gained a wealth of experience in optical imaging, µCT, PET/SPECT, and quantitative MRI, from small and large animal models through to human clinical trials. Ryan’s current research interests include diagnostic PET biomarkers of neuroinflammation, and DTI and fMRI of the brain and spinal cord to measure autonomic dysfunction.

Parisa Zakavi

Ms Parisa Zakavi graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering from Monash University in 2009. Currently, she is the Senior Technical Officer at Monash Biomedical Imaging (MBI) and has been a core MBI team member since 2015. She manages MBI’s clinical laboratories and is also responsible for training the new clinical users of the platform and providing hardware and software-based technical support to them. Her work at MBI has further included the integration of electrical stimulation with simultaneous TMS-fMRI as well as developing the codebase for a novel online database system for imaging platforms.

She is the project manager for the “Mobile MRI Project” at NIF’s MBI node.

Maggie Aulsebrook

Maggie Aulsebrook completed her PhD studies at Monash University in 2017 with a thesis focused on the development of luminescent lanthanide chemosensors for the detection of biologically relevant species. Following this, she took up a position as a postdoctoral research fellow at Chimie ParisTech in the development of a library of compounds for the advancement of zirconium-89-based radiotracers for applications in PET. Maggie then joined ANSTO as a research radiochemist where she was involved in the development of the next generation of nuclear medicines for the diagnosis and therapy of human diseases. While at ANSTO her research spanned the development of novel radiopharmaceuticals for application in pre-clinical and clinical studies and in commercial production. To interface more closely with the clinic, Maggie moved to UCSF and focused on the development and clinical translation of GMP-grade research radiopharmaceuticals for first-in-human and investigational studies.

Maggie has returned to Monash University and is leading the Radiochemistry Platform at Monash Biomedical Imaging (MBI). Maggie specialises in the development and clinical translation of radiopharmaceuticals. Throughout her career, she has led the development of a number of investigational radiopharmaceuticals for first-in-human application and provides expertise in the lifecycle of radiopharmaceuticals for clinical application.

Joseph Ioppolo

Dr Joseph Ioppolo completed his PhD at The University of Sydney in 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Lou Rendina and Prof. Michael Kassiou (Thesis “Boron-Containing Phosphonium Salts for Boron Neutron Capture Therapy and Imaging”). His post-doctoral work with Prof. John Valliant at McMaster University was to explore new gallium-67/68 tracers for imaging infection. After returning to Australia, as lead quality control chemist he played an integral role in the establishment and GMP licensing of the Molecular Imaging and Therapy Research Unit (MITRU) at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI), the first cyclotron facility for that state.

In 2016 he joined the RAPID team at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, taking part in the production and quality control of clinical 11C, 18F, 68Ga, 89Zr and 177Lu radiopharmaceuticals. Key projects included the production and test method validation of new tracers such as [18F]PSMA-1007, leading pre-clinical imaging and biodistribution projects, and introducing aluminium-fluoride labelling of novel peptides. Joseph is a certified radiopharmaceutical scientist registered with the Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine (ACPSEM). His interests are in developing new radiopharmaceuticals for imaging infection and inflammation, imaging and treating cancer, and for studying neurodegenerative/neuroinflammatory disorders.

Yaser Gholami

Dr Yaser Hadi Gholami is a physicist in the field of applied physics in nuclear medicine. His research (at both clinical and pre-clinical level) has been focused on the fields of nanomedicine, radionuclide therapy and imaging, radiation physics and biology, nuclear chemistry and Monte Carlo simulation. During August and November 2019, he worked at the Division of Nuclear Medicine and Biophysics at Harvard University/Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) as a visiting research associate and developed a novel theory for positron annihilation localization by nanoscale magnetization. He was selected as the winner of the prestigious 2020 Physics Grand Challenges (from the School of Physics, Usyd) to establish a quantum-medicine-platform for studying the quantum properties of cancer cells using positronium lifetime spectroscopy which could represent a paradigm shift for cancer medicine in the 21st century in near future. Dr Gholami in collaboration with Harvard Medical School/MGH has developed a chelate-free Nanoparticle radiolabelling technique for simultaneous PET/MR imaging and radionuclide therapy. He has also invented a novel method for positron annihilation localisation using nanoscale magnetisation for PET/MR imaging. He has also been collaborating with OncoSil Medical Company in developing personalised 32P microparticle therapy and contributed to achieving IDE approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and International Clinical Study. In addition, in collaboration with the Varian company he has established a radiobiological modelling platform whereby using pre- and post-treatment FDG PET/CT images plus the 90Y PET/CT of the radionuclide therapy, in addition to radiosensitivity of the tumour cells, valuable information on the temporal changes in FDG distribution of tumour can be derived.

Alex Burton

Alex Burton is the Senior Coordinator, Marketing and Outreach at the National Imaging Facility (NIF). Alex has experience across integrated engagement, media and communications projects. Alex is passionate about promoting the leading-edge work of the Australian research community supported by NIF, and enhancing the reputation of the NIF and its associated partners.

Monique Mahoney

Monique Mahoney is the Administrative Officer for NIF. Monique has previously worked in allied health administration and as a field research officer with Monash University. Through her role with NIF, Monique assists with general finance and operational activities and provides secretariat support to the NIF thematic groups.

Edward Green

Edward Green graduated from his Master of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Melbourne in 2016 and subsequently pursued a PhD under the supervision of Leigh Johnston, also at the University of Melbourne. The focus of his PhD was improvement of magnetic resonance imaging in the presence of RF field inhomogeneity at ultra-high field (7T) with developments in pulse design, approximation theory and new acquisition and reconstruction schemes.

Paul Sowman

Associate Professor Paul Sowman graduated with a PhD in Physiology from the University of Adelaide in 2008. He moved to Macquarie University in 2009 after being awarded NHMRC training fellowship to join the then newly developed KIT-Macquarie Brain Research Laboratory at Macquarie University. This lab was at the time the only MEG facility in the Southern Hemisphere and had the only whole-head child MEG system in the world at that time. Associate Professor Sowman is the Director of Research for the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University and oversees several neurophysiological labs including the MEG facility at Macquarie University.

Research interests:

  • Human neurophysiology, including MEG, EEG, EMG, TMS, TDCS, fNIRS
  • Developmental neuroscience
  • Executive function
  • Motor Control
  • Hearing

Michael Breakspear

Professor Michael Breakspear is Global Professor in Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle. He has an outstanding international reputation which includes his role as the Editor-in-Chief of Neuroimage, the leading field specific journal. Breakspear is a CI on nearly $30million of competitive funding (principally the NHMRC), has published 240 papers and has an H-index of 65. He is lead CI of the $6.4 million Prospective Image Study of Ageing and CID and lead of technology of the $18million ADNeT flagship dementia project. Professor Breakspear is also a psychiatrist in the Awabakal Aboriginal Health Centre and the Specialised Coordinator of Training for Scholarly Research in the Hunter New England Mental Health Training Program. Breakspear has published cutting edge translational research in bipolar disorder, major depression, dementia, epilepsy, schizophrenia and neonatal encephalopathy in addition to core imaging methods and modelling.

From 2009-2019, Breakspear was the inaugural Head of the Mental Health Research Program at QIMR Berghofer, one of Australia’s largest Medical Research Institutes. He worked closely with the Director on strategic growth of this newly formed Program which grew to encompass 10 research groups with over 240 researchers spanning wet labs, genetics, epidemiology, imaging and modelling. During this time, Breakspear was instrumental in the initiation and completion of the Herston Imaging Research Facility, a purpose-built clinical research facility with 4 founding academic and clinical partners. Breakspear thereafter chaired the Research Committee coordinating and promoting translational research, clinical governance and imaging protocols.

In 2019 Breakspear accepted the position as Global Professor of Systems Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle, NSW, where he now co-leads the strategic growth of basic and translational neuroimaging at Hunter Medical Research Institute. With co-lead, Ramadan, he has established new partnerships across the University of Newcastle (psychology, physics, engineering), Hunter New England Mental Health, the John Hunter Hospital (medicine, psychiatry, surgery, and the NSW Regional Health Partners, Academic Health Sciences Precinct).

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