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Cultivating the Next Generation: FUSF’s Fellowship Program

Written by Matt Eames, PhD
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Richard Merkin

Thanks in no small part to the philanthropic support of Dr. Richard Merkin and his vision of educating the best in the field, we formalized our fellowship program. The renamed Richard Merkin Visiting Fellowship in Focused Ultrasound program fosters collaboration among the Foundation, the Merkin Scholar’s home institution, and other institutions. It is open to mid-career or senior scientists and clinicians from industry or academia around the world to work with the technical and scientific team at the Foundation for approximately 12 months. The program provides the infrastructure for Merkin Scholars to conduct original research in focused ultrasound and participate in ongoing focused ultrasound research projects with members of the Foundation and investigators at UVA and other institutions. Scholars are expected to conduct publishable technical and pre-clinical research and present their work and promote the field of focused ultrasound. In turn, fellows benefit from the Foundation’s wide expertise in focused ultrasound, and enjoy opportunities to seek out and work closely with other investigators and clinicians throughout the Foundation’s network of research sites to stimulate the development of new translational and clinical research projects.

Dong-Guk Paeng

The first Merkin Scholar under the Richard Merkin Visiting Fellowship was Dong-guk Paeng, PhD, a research professor at Jeju National University in South Korea. While at FUSF, Dong-guk – who runs an underwater acoustics lab at his university – began learning about histotripsy (a promising new application of focused ultrasound) and designed and executed a large animal study in collaboration with FUSF and UVA to investigate thermal dose delivery strategies. The results are in final review with Scientific Reports, an open-access journal from the publishers of Nature. Today Dong-guk continues to be a focused ultrasound ambassador worldwide, and helps the Foundation build its network in Korea, China, Japan, and Taiwan. He was also so impressed by the capabilities of focused ultrasound that he recruited his senior graduate student, Changzhu Jin, to intern at the Foundation for a full year (Changzhu then successfully defended his PhD dissertation titled “Ray Based Skull Compensation for Transcranial Focused Ultrasound,” a topic that united his lab’s acoustics experience and the output of his collaboration in focused ultrasound at the Foundation and UVA).

Cyril Lafon

The Foundation’s second Merkin Visiting Fellowship was awarded to Cyril Lafon, PhD, a research professor at the University of Lyon, who is currently re-establishing his life in Lyon as the newly-appointed research director for his lab, LabTAU, having just concluded his tenure as a Merkin Scholar this past summer. Cyril took his fellowship opportunity in an entirely new direction by focusing on ultrasound-enhanced immunotherapy research in addition to managing a technical study on controlling cavitation threshold in thermal therapy. Cyril’s cavitation work is in revision with the IEEE journal TUFFC (Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control).

In 2017 the Foundation is benefiting from rapidly growing interest in the fellowship program from new candidates – certainly a product of the positive and productive experiences of our former fellows. We have also benefitted from the exceptional generosity of Dr. Merkin, who agreed to fund an additional Merkin Scholar in 2017, allowing the Foundation to host both a PhD researcher and a clinical researcher with an MD. Our two Merkin Scholars are Frederic Padilla, PhD, a FUS researcher from Cyril Lafon’s group at the LabTAU and Francesco Prada, MD, a neurosurgeon from Milan, Italy, and our first clinical fellow, who is working on sonodynamic therapy involving a surgical dye called fluorescein and on MR-elastography for early detection of the treatment effects of FUS. An additional, Foundation-funded fellow, Murat Karabiyikoglu, MD, is a former life-science investment professional and neurosurgeon. Murat is conducting independent research projects to help make the case for commercial adoption of the technology, especially for brain applications.

To apply for a fellowship or internship position with the Foundation in 2018, please contact me at meames@fusfoundation.org.

More information on the Merkin Visiting Fellowship in Focused Ultrasound

Matt Eames, PhD, is the director of extramural research at the Foundation.

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