Meet the Experts

The field of focused ultrasound is expanding rapidly, as researchers widen the scope of possibilities, clinicians treat more patients, manufacturers develop new uses, and sites begin more clinical trials. To keep up with the fast pace of progress, the Foundation works to profile those pioneering a path forward.

Norman Spivak

Norman Spivak is an MD/PhD student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), where he is conducting research on low-intensity focused ultrasound neuromodulation for applications in psychiatry and neurosurgery. His work has included the development of clinical trials investigating the technology for treating disorders of consciousness and generalized anxiety.

Read his investigator profile from September 2024.

Daniel Jeanmonod, MD

Dr. Jeanmonod was one of the first physicians to translate modern focused ultrasound to human patients with neuropathic pain and movement disorders. Learn about his role in discovering the brain mechanism behind these disorders and how he translated that knowledge into effective treatments.

Read his investigator profile from August 2024.

Clifford Cho, MD

Dr. Clifford Cho is the C. Gardner Child Professor of Surgery at the University of Michigan. His professional focus is on cancer immunology and cancers of the liver and pancreas. His team is investigating the immunostimulatory effects of histotripsy, a method of using focused ultrasound to mechanically destroy target tissue.

Read his investigator profile from July 2024.

Tong Yang, MD

Dr. Yang is the Director of the HIFU Department and chief physician at Ningbo No. 2 Hospital in China. He has treated approximately 1,500 cases, including difficult-to-treat tumors, including those in the liver, pancreas, and uterus.

Read his investigator profile from June 2024.

Himanshu Shekhar, PhD

Dr. Shekhar is an assistant professor and leads the Medical UltraSound Engineering (MUSE) Laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar.

Read his investigator profile from April 2024.

Mishal Mendiratta-Lala, MD

Mishal Mendiratta-Lala, MD, is an abdominal and cross-sectional interventional radiologist at the University of Michigan who led the US liver tumor histotripsy clinical trial (#HOPE4LIVER).

Read her investigator profile from January 2024.

Professor David Cranston

David Cranston, MB. ChB., MA, D.Phil, FRCS Eng, FRCS Ed, is the clinical director of the high-intensity focused ultrasound unit at the University of Oxford. He has worked in focused ultrasound for more than 20 years and was integral to securing the first Chinese focused ultrasound device in the Western world. He has since researched the technology’s potential to treat many tumors, including uterine fibroids and cancers of the kidney, liver, pancreas, and sarcomas.

Read his investigator profile from November 2023.

Professor Hashim Ahmed

Professor Hashim Ahmed is Chair of Urology at Imperial College London (ICL). He specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of prostate diseases, such as cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH).

Read his investigator profile from October 2023.

Sandra Black, OC, O.Ont., MD, FRSC

Dr. Sandra Black is a world-renowned neurologist who is investigating Alzheimer’s and dementia treatment from multiple angles. She is an expert on the relationship between the brain’s microvasculature and dementia. In this profile, Dr. Black explains why some neurologists are hesitant about opening the blood-brain barrier.

Read her investigator profile from June 2023.

Meaghan O’Reilly, PhD

Dr. Meaghan O’Reilly is an integral part of Sunnybrook Research Institute’s dynamic Focused Ultrasound Research group. She has gained national attention for her research developing focused ultrasound–based therapies for brain and spinal cord disorders. Her goal is to use the technology to treat conditions that affect the entire central nervous system.

Read her investigator profile from September 2022.

Rajiv Chopra, PhD

Rajiv Chopra, PhD, is a pioneering focused ultrasound researcher and a dynamic entrepreneur who has started several companies with the goal of putting focused ultrasound technology in the hands of physicians and researchers. His research has advanced the technology for prostate treatment and countless other applications. Now, he is planning to build a network of outpatient imaging clinics that offer therapeutic ultrasound as a treatment option.

Read his investigator profile from August 2022.

Zenon Starčuk, Jr., PhD

Zenon Starčuk, Jr., PhD, is the head of the Magnetic Resonance and Cryogenics Department, Magnetic Resonance Research Group, and Facility ISI-LMR of infrastructures Czech-BioImaging and Euro-BioImaging. He and a team of researchers at the Institute of Scientific Instruments (ISI) in the Czech Republic are seeking synergetic ways to use MRI and focused ultrasound for the development of new therapeutic applications.

Read his investigator profile from August 2022.

Noah Philip, MD

Noah Philip, MD, is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. He is the founding Director of Psychiatric Neuromodulation at the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Providence VA Health System in Providence, RI, and leads innovative mental health research at the VA’s RR&D Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology.

Read his investigator profile from February 2022.

Buzaev Clinic | Ufa, Russia

The Buzaev Clinic is the first focused ultrasound center in Russia offering commercial treatments to patients with essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, and cervical dystonia. We recently spoke with Igor Buzaev, CDBO, an interventional radiologist and one of the site’s founders to learn about how they are pioneering this noninvasive technology in Russia.

Read their commerical treatment site profile from January 2022.

Howard Eisenberg, MD

For more than a decade, Howard Eisenberg, MD, has been a cornerstone of the focused ultrasound program at the University of Maryland (UMD). As the Raymond K. Thompson, MD, Professor of Neurosurgery, he primarily uses focused ultrasound to treat movement disorders – like essential tremor and Parkinson’s disease – and pain.

Read his investigator update from January 2022.

Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD

Dr. Lipsman is the Director of the Harquail Centre for Neuromodulation and the Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He is leading the clinical trial investigating focused ultrasound to deliver antibodies to patients with metastatic breast cancer. This is an update of his original profile from May 2017.

Read his investigator update from October 2021.

Mikhail Shapiro, PhD

Dr. Shapiro’s work combines the physical interactions of ultrasound with synthetic biology – the field of science that redesigns organisms for useful purposes. At Caltech, he leads a 28-person research laboratory dedicated to ultrasound imaging and focused ultrasound.

Read his investigator profile from July 2021.

University Medical Center Utrecht

This comprehensive and dynamic site truly exemplifies the Foundation’s Centers of Excellence programmatic goal to serve as a hub for collaboration while bringing together academia, industry, and the Foundation to showcase focused ultrasound technology.

Read the research site profile from January 2021.

Eli Vlaisavljevich, PhD

The Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech discusses his “unfocused” focused ultrasound work, which ranges from cancer treatment to conservation.

Read his investigator profile from December 2020.

Joan Vidal-Jové, MD, PhD

Now the Director of the Comprehensive Tumor Center at the Khuab Institute for Interventional Oncology in Barcelona, Dr. Vidal-Jové is dedicated to advancing focused ultrasound to treat pancreatic and liver cancer.

Read his investigator profile from December 2020.

The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children’s National Hospital | Karun Sharma, MD, PhD

Children’s National Hospital researchers have made strides treating pediatric solid tumors and now have their sights on novel cancer applications of focused ultrasound.

Read the research site profile from September 2020.

José Obeso, MD, PhD

Neurologist Prof. José Obeso has built a large research and clinical practice centered on using focused ultrasound to halt the progression of Parkinson’s and other brain diseases.

Read his investigator profile from July 2020.

Craig Slingluff, MD

Dr. Craig Slingluff’s current clinical trial at the University of Virginia is studying the effects of focused ultrasound and immunotherapy to treat advanced solid tumors.

Read his investigator profile from July 2020.

Seoul National University Hospital | Jae Young Lee, MD, PhD

The Core Hub for Medical Research of UltraSound (CHORUS) is a focused ultrasound research facility at Seoul National University Hospital with a mission to make a better world using ultrasound.

Read the research site profile from June 2020.

Stephen Scionti, MD

Stephen Scionti, MD, a urologist who specializes in prostate cancer treatment, is a leading authority on using focused ultrasound to treat the disease.

Read his investigator profile from May 2020.

Ashish Ranjan, BVSc, PhD

As a veterinarian scientist, Dr. Ranjan studies how focused ultrasound can noninvasively treat cancer and non-healing wounds in dogs and cats.

Read his investigator profile from March 2020.

Physics for Medicine Paris | Jean-Francois Aubry, PhD

Physics for Medicine Paris is dedicated to inventing technologies for medical imaging and therapy by translating fundamental physics ideas into preclinical and clinical devices.

Read the site profile from December 2019.

Isabelle Aubert, PhD

Isabelle Aubert, PhD, Senior Scientist and Director of the Brain Repair Group at Sunnybrook Research Institute, studies the neurobiology of focused ultrasound to help patients with Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s.

Read her investigator profile from December 2019.

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust | Wladyslaw Gedroyc, MBBS, MRCP, FRCR

Imperial College Healthcare National Health Service (NHS) Trust is the largest teaching and research trust in the United Kingdom, and it includes five hospitals in London. We interviewed Professor Gedroyc to learn more about the focused ultrasound program that he created and how it continues to expand.

Read the site profile from March 2019.

University of Queensland’s Queensland Brain Institute | Jürgen Götz, PhD

In January 2019, the University of Queensland (Brisbane, Australia) announced that $10 million of its latest capital campaign would be directed to its Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) to support the work of Dr. Jürgen Götz and his team of researchers at the Clem Jones Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research (CJCADR). As QBI completes the necessary steps toward initiating their first focused ultrasound-based phase 1 clinical safety trial for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, we interviewed Dr. Götz to learn more about CJCADR and their progress.

Read the site profile from January 2019.

Dheeraj Gandhi, MD

Dr. Dheeraj Gandhi has been involved in all aspects of clinical focused ultrasound work at the University of Maryland, with a specific focus on facilitating direct image-based targeting of brain structures using advanced MR techniques. He has been involved in more than 65 focused ultrasound procedures and is now Principal Investigator for a new clinical trial that uses focused ultrasound to treat neuropathic pain. We recently interviewed Dr. Gandhi to learn more about his new study, his career, and his work.

Read his investigator profile from October 2018.

Hong Chen, PhD | Washington University in St. Louis

The Chen Ultrasound Laboratory at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri (WUSTL) is the epicenter of focused ultrasound research that is conducted across at least eight different academic departments within the University. We interviewed Dr. Chen to learn more about the projects and people at this dynamic center.

Read the research site profile from September 2018.

Constantin Coussios, PhD

Professor Coussios is the Director of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Statutory Chair of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford. On the heels of his seminal publication in the Lancet Oncology, we asked Professor Coussios to tell us more about how he became interested in focused ultrasound, his current projects, and his plans for the future.

Read his investigator profile from August 2018.

Graeme Woodworth, MD

Dr. Woodworth is Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Director of its Brain Tumor Treatment & Research Center. He is researching the use of focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier to provide treatment options for patient with brain tumors (both glioma and metastatic) and other brain diseases.

Read his investigator profile from August 2018.

Michael Temple, MD

Michael Temple, MD, is a Canadian interventional radiologist who has done groundbreaking work using the technology to treat pediatric patients. Learn more about his focused ultrasound work and plans for the future.

Read his investigator profile from May 2018.

University of Calgary

University of Calgary researchers with the Hotchkiss Brain Institute in the Cumming School of Medicine are combining expertise and resources to bring the first comprehensive focused ultrasound brain program to Western Canada. Physicians and scientists from the departments of Clinical Neurosciences, Radiology, and Psychiatry have all joined together for this project.

Read the site profile from January 2018.

Richard Price, PhD

Can focused ultrasound be used as a tool to allow therapeutic agents to reach deadly brain tumors? Is it possible to stop the progression and spread of breast cancer? If Parkinson’s disease is diagnosed early, could its effect on the brain be reversed? We recently sat down with Dr. Richard Price whose team is tackling these questions and more.

Read his investigator profile from October 2017.

Matthew Bucknor, MD

As the lead clinician at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who is performing focused ultrasound treatments, Matthew Bucknor, MD, has used the technology to perform more than 30 procedures on 20 patients. Combining his focused ultrasound expertise with his sub-specialization in musculoskeletal radiology, he has recently initiated a new clinical trial comparing focused ultrasound to CT-guided radiofrequency ablation for treatment of specific bone tumors.

Read his investigator profile from October 2017.

Vibhor Krishna, MD, ScM

Dr. Krishna is an Assistant Professor, Center for Neuromodulation, Department of Neurosurgery and Department of Neuroscience, at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio with a focus on treatments and techniques of deep brain stimulation, spinal cord stimulation, peripheral nerve stimulation, and high intensity focused ultrasound.

Read his investigator profile from July 2017.

Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD

An early adopter of focused ultrasound, neurosurgeon Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD is looking to bring non-invasive solutions to patients as quickly and as safely as possible. He intends to lead the way by collaborating with experts in neurodegenerative disease, psychiatric disorders, and oncology. This approach led him and his team at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto to become the first to use focused ultrasound to open the blood-brain barrier in a patient with Alzheimer’s disease.

Read his investigator profile from May 2017.

Kathy Ferrara, PhD

Katherine W. Ferrara, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis and the Director of their Center for Content Rich Evaluation of Therapeutic Efficacy. She also serves on the Foundation’s Research Advisory Committee and has contributed as faculty during our biennial Symposium.

Read her investigator profile from April 2017.

INSERM – Laboratory of Therapeutic Applications of Ultrasound (LabTAU)

LabTAU is located within a large medical and research community and conducts significant translational and clinical research with a multi-disciplinary, highly qualified, and integrated team of physicians and scientists. The Center has many years of experience in commercializing technology and creating strategic interfaces between engineering and medicine.

Read the site profile from February 2017.

Suzanne LeBlang, MD | Fibroid Education Center, Boca Raton, FL

Suzanne LeBlang, MD, or “Dr. Susie” as she is referred to at the Fibroid Education Center, has been an important member of the focused ultrasound community having published papers, delivered numerous scientific talks, and trained many practitioners. She also serves as a Co-Chief Medical Officer of the Focused Ultrasound Foundation and the Medical Director for the Fibroid Education Center.

Read her clinician profile from January 2017.

Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute

The Thunder Bay Regional Health Research Institute (TBRHRI) is a new center located in a remote area of Canada that is already contributing to the field of focused ultrasound in the region and around the world. The Regional Health Sciences Centre created the research institute as a joint venture to help advance its academic research mandate and strengthen its role as a leader in healthcare innovation and delivery.

Read the research site profile from December 2016.

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Located in Toronto, Sunnybrook is conducting research for focused ultrasound in neurology, neurosurgery, urology, orthopedics, gynecology, radiation oncology, and biomedical engineering and have studies planned in the near future for Alzheimer’s, obsessive-compulsive disorder, depression, and others. In November 2016, Sunnybrook was named a Foundation Center of Excellence.

Read the research site profile from November 2016.

University of Maryland

In recognition of their leadership in advancing focused ultrasound research for the brain, the Foundation is pleased to designate the University of Maryland as a Center of Excellence.The Chair of the Department of Neurosurgery, Howard Eisenberg, MD, and Chair of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Elias Melhem, MD, are managing a comprehensive bench-to-bedside program expanding the technology’s neurosurgical capabilities as well as innovating new methods for delivering therapies to the brain.

Read the research site profile from September 2016.

Cyril Lafon, PhD

Cyril Lafon, PhD, joins the Foundation as the 2016-2017 Richard Merkin Visiting Fellow. Dr. Lafon is the Director of LabTAU, a research laboratory of INSERM – the French National Institutes of Health – located in Lyon. Dr. Lafon co-founded Carthera, the maker of the Sonocloud implanted pulsed focused ultrasound device that opens the blood-brain barrier. He sits on the board of the International Society for Therapeutic Ultrasound (ISTU), is Vice President of the French Society of Biomedical Engineering (SFGBM), and is Associate Editor for the Journal of Therapeutic Ultrasound.

Read his investigator profile from July 2016.

Charles Caskey, PhD, and Will Grissom, PhD | Vanderbilt University’s Institute of Imaging Science

Drs. Caskey and Grissom are researchers at Vanderbilt University’s Institute of Imaging Science, where they focus on image-guided therapy applications like MR-guided focused ultrasound. The two are Assistant Professors at Vanderbilt – Caskey is in Radiology department and Grissom is in Biomedical Engineering.

Read the site profile with Q&A from Caskey and Grissom from May 2016.

Cary N. Robertson, MD

Dr. Robertson is a urologic oncologist and Associate Professor, Division of Urology, Department of Surgery , Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. He received his medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine and was a Urologic Oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland.

Read his investigator profile from January 2016.

George M. Suarez, MD, FACS, FA AP

Known as one of the world’s leading experts and practitioners in HIFU, Dr. Suarez has performed over 2,000 HIFU procedures and has personally trained more than 400 doctors in this life-changing technology. Dr. Suarez is a Board certified urologist who practices in Miami, Florida, and is a former faculty member of the University of Miami department of Urology.

Read his investigator profile from January 2016.

John F. Ward, MD, FACS

Dr. Ward is Associate Professor of Surgery, Department of Urology, at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. He received his BS in Biology at the University of Notre Dame and his MD at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. Postgraduate training includes a clinical residency in urology at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego, CA, and a clinical fellowship in urologic-oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN.

Read his investigator profile from January 2016.

Jean-Francois Aubry, PhD | Institut Langevin

The Wave Physics for Medicine and Biology laboratory is a leading biomedical research center, developing innovative imaging concepts, and creating and patenting therapeutic innovations in focused ultrasound.

Headed by Dr. Mickaël Tanter, the laboratory is within the Institut Langevin in Paris and is affilitated with the French National Institute of Health (Inserm), the French National Center for Research (CNRS), and the ESPCI ParisTech School of Engineering.

Read the site profile from December 2015.

Tom Matula, PhD | The University of Washington

Eight years ago, focused ultrasound pioneer Larry Crum, PhD, transitioned away from directing the department that houses the focused ultrasound efforts at the University of Washington (UW), but under the leadership of Tom Matula, PhD, it has continued to grow into a powerhouse for researching and commercializing focused ultrasound technologies.

Read the site profile from November 2015.

Jürgen Götz, PhD

University of Queensland Professor Jürgen Götz, PhD, is also the Director of the Jones Centre for Ageing Dementia Research. He is driven to understand the way that Alzheimer’s disease cripples the brain and then design an affordable treatment. His ideas to combine focused ultrasound, immunology, and medications are leading to big discoveries.

Read his investigator profile from October 2015.

Wladyslaw Gedroyc, MBBS, MRCP, FRCR

Wladyslaw “Wady” Gedroyc, MBBS, MRCP, FRCR is a Consultant Radiologist at St. Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College NHS trust and has been a champion of focused ultrasound for 16 years. He has treated more than 600 patients, mostly women with uterine fibroids, at St. Mary’s. The center now treats about one uterine fibroid patient per week, and they are continuing to explore other uses of the technology.

Read his investigator profile from October 2015.

Seung-Schik Yoo, PhD, MBA

Seung-Schik Yoo, PhD, MBA, is an Associate Professior of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and an MRI Research Associate at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. He is making breakthroughs in using focused ultrasound to induce functional neuromodulation of the brain and peripheral nervous system and experimenting with various FUS parameters to one day achieve this important milestone in humans.

Read his investigator profile from September 2015.

Nathan McDannold, PhD

Nathan McDannold, PhD, has put tremendous effort into the brain applications of focused ultrasound and worked with Kullervo Hynynen to become one of the first to open the blood-brain barrier. His work in drug delivery and neurodegenerative diseases is sure to change the way that medicine is practiced. A medical physicist, he has been a participant in the care of every focused ultrasound patient treated at Brigham & Women’s Hospital since 1996.

Read his investigator profile from September 2015.

Clare Tempany, MD

Radiologist Clare Tempany, MD, has been a Vice Chair for Research at since 2007. She manages the National Center for Image Guided Therapy at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, a Focused Ultrasound Foundation Center of Excellence. Dr. Tempany has been instrumental in the clinical trials that led to FDA approval of Insightec’s focused ultrasound system for fibroids and bone metastases. After being involved in the early proof of concept, she is now looking to conduct clinical studies for treating prostate disease.

Read her investigator profile from September 2015.

Zhen Xu, PhD

Zhen Xu, PhD is an Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Pediatrics at the University of Michigan. She seeks to ultimately see the translation focused ultrasound to the medical clinic, providing life-changing non-invasive treatment for diseases such as blood clots, liver tumors, brain cancer, and congenital heart disease.

Read her investigator profile from August 2015.

Joseph Frank, MD, FACP

Joseph Frank, Chief of the Frank Laboratory in Radiology and Imaging Sciences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), recently visited the Foundation to present a webinar about his team’s work using focused ultrasound to boost stem cell homing.

Read his investigator profile from July 2015.

Joan Vidal-Jove, MD, PhD

Dr. Joan Vidal-Jove is the Head of Surgical Oncology at Barcelona University Hospital and is currently studying focused ultrasound for pancreatic cancer. His early research indicates that FUS with chemotherapy may have the ability to extend survival of patients with unresectable tumors.

Read his investigator profile from July 2015

Elisa Konofagou, PhD

Dr. Konofagou is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Radiology at Columbia University and head of the Ultrasound Elasticity Imaging Laboratory (UEIL) there. Breaking through barriers, she is exploring alternative imaging techniques for focused ultrasound procedures, investigating neurological and cancer applications in preclinical studies, and working with her team to build medical devices in-house to meet their research needs.

Read her investigator profile from June 2015.

Justin Hanes, PhD

Dr. Hanes is the Lewis J. Ort Professor of Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Director of the Center for Nanomedicine, The Wilmer Eye Institute at JHU. He works to harness the power of nanotechnology to deliver drugs more efficiently to targeted regions of the body, like the blood-brain barrier.

Read more in his investigator profile from June 2015.

Richard Price, PhD

Dr. Price is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Radiation & Radiation Oncology and Research Director of the UVA Focused Ultrasound Center. His primary interests in focused ultrasound relate to drug and gene delivery across the blood-brain barrier and working to enhance drug and gene delivery to muscle.

Read more in his investigator profile from June 2015.

Chandan Guha, MBBS, PhD

Dr. Guha is the Vice Chair of Radiation Oncology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) and Montefiore Medical Center and Professor of Pathology, Urology, and Radiation Oncology at Einstein. His research work is in the fields of immunology, radiation oncology, and liver diseases, and has been focused on immunotherapeutic approaches for cancer therapy and the use of regenerative strategies to repopulate injured tissue by use of stem cell-based technologies. He is also involved in treating prostate and liver cancers and is an investigator in several worldwide clinical trials.

Read more in his investigator profile from May 2015.

Pejman Ghanouni, MD, PhD | Stanford University

Driven by pioneering Body MRI radiologist Pejman (Peji) Ghanouni, MD, PhD, and a multidisciplinary team of experts, Stanford University has become a luminary site for focused ultrasound (FUS) research and is laying the groundwork for future clinical success. Read Dr. Ghanouni’s profile from May 2015.

In this video, Dr. Ghanouni discusses his passion for FUS and the work happening at Stanford.

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