Conference Summary
The Joint Annual Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Biology (ESMRB) in Berlin, Germany on May 19-27, 2007.

Dominique Jennings
Ph.D. Candidate
Biomedical Engineering GIDP

This letter comes with great appreciation to the Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs for providing me with funding via the Herbert E. Carter Travel Award to attend the Joint Annual Meeting of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and the European Society for Magnetic Resonance in Biology (ESMRB) in Berlin, Germany on May 19-27, 2007. This international, joint meeting has a multidisciplinary membership of over 5,000 clinicians, physicists, engineers, biochemists, and technologists. This society is devoted to promoting communication, research, development, and applications in the field of magnetic resonance in medicine and biology.

Aside from the patent academic benefits of attending major international conferences like this one, a critical exercise for graduate students nearing the commencement of their graduate career should be to increase the frequency of exposure to top principal investigators and secure job-offers for post-doctoral training. Attendance and presentation at major international conferences like the ISMRM-ESMRB significantly improves those interactions, especially if a student is interested in international postdoctoral training. Since members of my dissertation committee agreed that my research will be ready for defense at the end of the year, development of collaborations for future post-doctoral work was pivotal for me at this meeting.

Indeed, I was offered several potential positions for post-doctoral training, including a position at the eminent Cancer Research Institute at the University of Cambridge in England, United Kingdom. Immediately following my presentation at the ISMRM, I was invited to present and discuss potential applications of our current imaging system at the University of Cambridge, and while there, I was given the opportunity to meet several faculty members to discuss potential collaborations following my graduation.

Another meaningful benefit of attending meetings is academic advancement. In some instances, major conferences offer educational sessions that may complement and in some cases, supplement the student’s curricula. For example, during the preliminary weekend-educational sessions of the meeting, I spent my first days of the meeting in educational sessions like Foundations of Quantitative Imaging and Data Analysis. These sessions filled vacancies in my knowledge of some of the mathematics of image reconstruction, as well as the dynamically advancing issues regarding faster and more efficient imaging reconstruction techniques, a topic that will be critical to the advancement of Dynamic Contrast Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DCE-MRI) in the future. Since this type of imaging is primarily used to understand vessel hemodynamics, time resolution is an important component considered during optimization of this imaging modality.  During the week, I was exposed to new and innovative research pertaining to DCE-MRI. I attended hour-long morning plenary sessions that were devoted to angiogenesis and how and when DCE-MRI can be used to non-invasively interrogate this physiological process. I was also able to attend other interesting plenary sessions such as Experimental
Methods in MR of Cancer, which updated me on advancements in the field of imaging cancer, including Clinical MR Spectroscopy and Diffusion-Weighted MRI for the early detection of cancer and response to therapy, all relevant interests in this laboratory.

In summary, this meeting was extremely productive, academically and professionally. I strongly feel I would not have otherwise been offered such a prestigious post-doctoral position without my attendance at this meeting. I am sincerely grateful to the Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs for granting me that opportunity.