Prof. Simon Cherry

Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology, University of California, Davis, USA
School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, UK

Simon R. Cherry, Ph.D.  received his B.Sc.(Hons) in Physics with Astronomy from University College London in 1986 and a Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the Institute of Cancer Research, University of London in 1989.  In 1993, he became a faculty member in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA.  Simon joined UC Davis in 2001 and is currently Distinguished Research Professor in the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology.
Simon’s research interests center around biomedical imaging. His major contributions have been in developing systems for positron emission tomography, for example in designing and building the first microPET scanner for small-animal imaging and as co-leader of the EXPLORER consortium which developed the world’s first total-body PET scanner.  He also has contributed to detector technology innovations for PET, conducted early biomedical studies using Cerenkov luminescence, and developed the first proof-of-concept hybrid PET/MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) systems.
Simon is an elected fellow of six professional societies and a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Inventors.  He has received several international awards including the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Cassen Prize in 2022.  He served as Editor-in-Chief of the journal Physics in Medicine and Biology from 2011-2020. Simon is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, review articles and book chapters in the field of biomedical imaging. He is also lead author of the widely-used textbook “Physics in Nuclear Medicine”.

Prof. Craig Levin

Stanford University, USA

Dr. Craig S. Levin is a Professor of Radiology and, by Courtesy, of Physics, Electrical Engineering, and Bioengineering at Stanford University, U.S.A. He is a founding member of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, and Principal Investigator and Director of the NIH-NCI funded T32 Stanford Molecular Imaging Scholars postdoctoral training program. He received his M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from Yale University. An internationally recognized researcher in the field of molecular imaging he has over 200 peer-reviewed publications and 40 patents awarded or pending. He directs a 20-member laboratory that explores new concepts in instrumentation and software algorithms for molecular imaging, introduces some of these new tools into clinical and pre-clinical imaging studies of cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders, and partners with industry to disseminate some of these technologies into products used for patient care throughout the world. To support his research, he has generated numerous grant awards as Principal Investigator from government, industry, and private institutions. He lectured in a Nobel symposium in 2007, and in 2012 was elected into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering’s College of Fellows, and also in 2012 was given the U.S. Academy of Radiology Research Distinguished Investigator Recognition Award. In 2020 he received the Edward J. Hoffman Medical Imaging Scientist award from the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society, and in 2023 he received the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Mars Shot Award.

Prof. Charalampos Tsoumpas

University Medical Center Groningen, The Netherlands|

I have developed advanced mathematical and computational methods that embed physics-based and physiological models into medical image reconstruction. My work helps improve the accuracy of quantitative imaging and has been adopted in clinical and commercial systems. In 2025 I became a Vici laureate, a prestigious and highly competitive research award sponsored by the Research Dutch Foundation (Domain Applied & Engineering Science) to work towards ultra-low-dose PET/CT imaging.
My research career began during my bachelor in Physics at the National University of Athens (1998–2002), where I designed a novel image reconstruction method using artificial neural networks—work that led to my first publication. During my MSc in Biomedical Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (2002–2004), I completed a 5-month internship at Hammersmith Hospital in London. There, I developed new models for scattered photons, which led to two patents and software improvements now used in clinical systems. During my PhD at Imperial College London (2004–2007), I developed a novel reconstruction technique integrating tracer kinetics, enabling the generation of parametric images—a breakthrough now incorporated into modern PET/CT systems. As a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London (2008–2013), I achieved two further milestones: (1) demonstrating the first use of MRI for non-rigid motion correction with one of the world’s earliest PET-MRI prototypes, and (2) showing the critical role of regularisation in motionaware reconstruction. As a Lecturer in Medical Imaging at the University of Leeds (2013–2021), I led projects funded by national and international organisations including the Leverhulme Trust, Royal Society, UK Research Innovation councils, and the EU. Over the past two decades, my team has contributed extensively to the STIR (Software for Tomographic Image Reconstruction) open-source platform.
My work has been acknowledged by leading professional societies. I am a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Physics & Engineering in Medicine, and a Senior Member of IEEE. In 2017, I received together with my co-authors the Rotblat Medal from the Institute of Physics for a highly cited article published in Physics in Medicine & Biology.
I have held leadership roles in several research networks and academic-industry collaborations. Since 2014, I have been a team leader in the Crystal Clear Collaboration coordinated by CERN. I represented the UK in two COST Actions (TD1007, TD1401), co-chaired a software working group, and led dissemination efforts. I am also a founding member of the Collaborative Computational Project: Synergistic Reconstruction in Biomedical Imaging (CCP SyneRBI).From 2015 to 2018, I served as Head of Enterprise & Innovation at the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine (250 staff, 80 academics, 120 PhD students), where I enhanced industry engagement and helped secure funding from the Royal Society, MRC, and EPSRC, in collaboration with partners including Positrigo, GE Healthcare, Invicro, and Bruker. STIR is now used in Positrigo’s commercial PET scanners.
I have supervised 23 PhD students (12 as primary supervisor) and maintain close connections with many of them. I strongly value mentorship, team-oriented environments, and fostering research with genuine clinical relevance and novelty. I place high importance on developing well-documented open-source code to accelerate scientific progress and reproducibility. Several of my mentees have built successful careers in academia and industry. I’m particularly proud that my first two PhD students under primary supervision received the IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society Graduate Scholarship.

Prof. Taiga Yamaya

National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology (QST), Japan


Taiga Yamaya, Ph. D, is a Group Leader of Imaging Physics Group at National Institutes for Quantum Science and Technology (QST, fomer NIRS) in Japan. His research interest is the development of next generation positron emission tomography (PET) systems. PET is a promising method to promote molecular imaging research as well as cancer diagnosis. However there are still large demands for higher resolution, higher sensitivity and lower cost. Therefore his research interests are studies on detectors, systems, image reconstruction algorithms and data corrections to improve image quality and quantity in nuclear medicine. In particular, based on the core technology of depth-of-interaction (DOI) measurement, new equipment concepts of the OpenPET for joint PET – therapy imaging, the helmet-type PET for high performance brain imaging and the Compton-PET for the realization of whole gamma imaging (WGI) and quantum PET (Q-PET) are under development.

Prof. Qiyu Peng

Schenzen Bay Laboratory, China

Name: Qiyu Peng
Title: Senior Principal Investigator, Deputy Director, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory; Founder and Head, SZBL-Sun Yat-sen University Seventh Affiliated Hospital Joint Molecular Imaging Center.
Email: qiyupeng@gmail.com
Research Website: https://pengqy-lab-cn.szbl.ac.cn/

Professional Summary:
Dr. Qiyu Peng is a leading PET instrumentation scientist and former Career Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, with early core contributions to landmark projects including OpenPET and the EXPLORER total body PET program. He has produced more than 200 publications and 78 patents spanning detector physics, advanced PET system design, and clinically oriented high resolution imaging technologies. At the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory he leads the development of next generation PET platforms, including a freely moving wearable human brain PET system, an ultra high resolution dedicated brain PET/CT, and a 2-meter total body PET/CT.

Research Interests:
– PET detector physics and electronics

– High resolution TOF and DOI imaging

– Wearable and mobile PET systems

– Multimodal molecular imaging and clinical translation

Education:
PhD, Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stanford University

Professional Experience:
Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, China
Senior Principal Investigator and Deputy Director, Institute of Biomedical Engineering (2022 to present)

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA

Scientist (2006 to 2022)

University of California, Berkeley

Lecturer, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (2007 to 2010)

Selected Contributions to PET Technology:

– Development of high resolution small animal PET/CT and PET/MRI

– First human wearable brain TOF-PET for freely moving imaging

– Ultra high resolution dedicated brain PET/CT

– Two-meter total body TOF-DOI-PET/CT system

Publications and Patents:
More than 200 peer reviewed publications
78 patents in PET detector design, system architecture, and imaging electronics

Prof. Ramsey Badawi

University of California, Davis, USA

Ramsey Badawi is Professor of Radiology at UC Davis Medical Center, where he serves as Chief of Nuclear Medicine and Vice-Chair for Research. He obtained his PhD in PET Physics at the University of London in 1998, specializing in data corrections for fully 3D PET. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Washington, Seattle under the mentorship of Dr. Tom Lewellen, he joined the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in 2000, where he helped to set up their first clinical PET service. In 2004 he joined UC Davis. His interests are in the development of high resolution PET/CT scanners for extremity imaging in humans, ultra-high resolution scanners for animal imaging, re-configurable PET systems and total-body PET scanners. He is also interested in applications of advanced reconstruction methods for parametric imaging in humans.
Prof. Badawi’s Lab is currently developing a high-performance pre-clinical PET/MRI scanner and a re-usable toolkit for building application-specific PET scanners. His flagship project, in collaboration with Distinguished Professor Simon Cherry, is the development and application of the world’s first total-body PET scanner, EXPLORER. Dr. Badawi is using the EXPLORER scanner to improve current clinical practice and shed light on biological problems that could not previously be answered, such as how the organs of the body interact together to create a system.