Five Focused Ultrasound Pioneers Recognized with Awards

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As the focused ultrasound field grows, an increasing number of pioneering researchers are being recognized for their innovative work to advance this technology. Recent award recipients include Frank Wolfram, PhD, Kullervo Hynynen, PhD, Charles Cain, PhD, Elisa Konofagou, PhD, and Yun Jin, PhD. We ask the community to please notify us of future awards that we should acknowledge.

Wolfram Frank sqFrank Wolfram, PhD, of SRH Wald-Klinikum Gera in Germany, recently received a scientific prize for best Promotion (PhD) Thesis work by the German Society of Ultrasound in Medicine (DEGUM). Wolfram has studied methods to treat the lung using focused ultrasound, including flooding the organ with saline. He has shown in preclinical models that it is possible to ablate lung tumor tissue through flooded lung while leaving the healthy lung parenchyma unaffected. His work is now being translated into the clinical setting. The prize was awarded last month at the Joint Meeting of German speaking Ultrasound Societies.

hynynen sqKullervo Hynynen, PhD, of Sunnybrook Research Institute and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, was awarded the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize from the University of British Columbia. During his more than 30-year career in focused ultrasound, Dr. Hynynen has pioneered techniques to open the blood-brain barrier in search of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease and brain tumors.

Three awards were presented at the 2018 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium in Kobe, Japan.
See the meeting report published in our November newsletter >

Charles Cain sqThe University of Michigan’s Charles Cain, PhD, received the Rayleigh Award for his outstanding contributions to therapeutic ultrasound and for the invention and development of histotripsy. The Rayleigh Award is the highest honor for achievements within the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectronics, and Frequency Control (UFFC) Society in the field of Ultrasonics.

Elisa Konofagou sqElisa Konofagou, PhD, of Columbia University was awarded the IEEE Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonics Award. A mid-career award, this honor is intended for primary investigators that have contributed to the field of ultrasonics with an excellent track record of scholarly publications, technical reports, and/or inventions/patents.

Jing Yun 500x500Yun Jing, PhD, received the IEEE Ultrasonics Early Career Investigator Award for his contributions to numerical modeling of wave propagation at North Carolina State University. The award recognizes the achievements of an early-stage researcher in the area of ultrasonics and its applications.