Cai group recognized for research achievements at annual imaging meeting

Led by radiology professor and University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center member Weibo Cai, PhD, current Cai research group members received a total of 11 awards, a record for the group (the previous record was 10 awards a few years ago).

Seven Cai group members (Emily Ehlerding, Carolina Ferreira, Dawei Jiang, Dalong Ni, Bo Yu, Lei Kang and Weijun Wei) each received a SNMMI travel award to attend the meeting. There were only a total of 20 travel awards given this year. Reinier Hernandez, a former medical physics doctoral student in the Cai group who’s now a postdoctoral scholar working with UW Carbone member Jamey Weichert, PhD, also received a travel award. In total, the current Cai Group members gave 12 oral presentations and four posters.

The Cai group had two abstracts selected for Young Investigator Award symposiums, and Carolina Ferreira received the third-place Center for Molecular Imaging Innovation and Translation Young Investigator Award. Of all of the nearly 1,800 accepted SNMMI abstracts, about 10 were selected by the meeting organizers for press releases. One of Dalong Ni’s abstracts was selected for a press release this year.

The Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging had a competition for Young Scientist Award, and Dalong Ni received the third-place prize for his abstract.

There were several summary sessions and highlight lectures where leaders in the field summarized the best abstracts presented at the annual meeting. Many of the Cai group abstracts were presented in the highlight lecture.

In addition to the group’s success at the annual meeting, Cai was also recently named to Nano Research’s list of 45 outstanding young investigators under 45, and he received a 2018 research award from the journal Nano-Micro Letters.