Cai Research Group at the 2017 SNMMI Annual Meeting in Denver
The Molecular Imaging and Nanotechnology Laboratory (http://mi.wisc.edu/) had another successful year at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) Annual Meeting in Denver (June 2017) and received multiple awards.
Four Cai Group members (Dawei Jiang, Dalong Ni, Shreya Goel, and Emily Ehlerding) received a SNMMI Travel Award to attend the meeting, out of 16 total Travel Awards given this year. In addition, Emily Ehlerding also received a UW-Madison Conference Presentation Funds Student Research Travel Grant to attend the meeting. Two other Cai Group Members, Lei Kang and Bo Yu, also attended the meeting. In total, Cai Group members gave 12 oral presentations and 4 posters.
At the meeting, the Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (CASNMMI) had a competition for Young Scientist Award; Dalong Ni received the 3rd prize for his abstract. Haiming Luo, a former post-doc in the group, received the SNMMI Alavi-Mandell Award for his 2016 publication in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, official journal of SNMMI.
At the SNMMI Annual Meeting, there are several summary sessions and highlight lectures where leaders in the field summarize the best abstracts presented at the Annual Meeting. Many of the Cai Group abstracts were presented in the highlight lecture.
Prof. Cai served on multiple committees/boards and played multiple roles at the Annual Meeting. Within SNMMI, Prof. Cai is the President of the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council (RPSC), Member of the SNMMI Committee on Awards, Committee on Councils and Centers, Committee on Scientific Program, and the House of Delegates.
There are 9 Tracks at the SNMMI Annual Meeting. Prof. Cai is one of the two Vice-Chairs of the "Molecular Targeting Probes - Radioactive & Nonradioactive" Track, as well as the Sub-Chair of RPSC Young Investigator Award (YIA) Symposium. He is a Moderator and Co-Moderator of three 90-minute sessions: RPSC YIA Symposium, Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation (CMIIT) YIA Symposium, as well as an Integrated Session, "Radiotheranostics". In the last session, he was also invited to give a 20-minute summary talk on Radiotheranostics.
Many of Prof. Cai's former trainees attended the meeting: Hao Hong (1st post-doc in the Cai Group, 2008-2014, now an Assistant Professor of Radiology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, had his postdoc Daiqin Chen receive the CMIIT YIA Award (2nd place), as well as one of the 16 Travel Awards. Additionally, his post-doc Dongzhi Yang received the prestigious Berson-Yalow Award last year at the SNMMI Annual Meeting in San Diego.
Feng Chen, a former post-doc of the Cai Group (2012-2015) who is now a Senior Scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, also received a Travel Award and gave an Oral Presentation. Hyung-Jun Im, a former Fellow co-trained by Prof. Cai and Prof. Steve Cho (2015-2017), and now an Assistant Professor at Seoul National University in Korea, also attended the meeting. In total, 10 past/present Cai Group members attended the SNMMI Annual Meeting, a record for the group.
Two other UW-Madison graduate students also received SNMMI Travel Awards: Tobey Betthauser and Patrick Lao, both from Prof. Brad Christian's group.