RESTON, Va. - The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2017-2019 SNMMI Wagner-Torizuka Fellowship. This two-year fellowship, founded in 2008 by the late Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, and the late Kanji Torizuka, MD, PhD, is designed to provide extensive training and experience in the fields of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging for Japanese physicians in the early stages of their careers.
"SNMMI is proud to sponsor the Wagner-Torizuka Fellowship," said Hossein Jadvar, MD, PhD, MPH, MBA, FACNM, FSNMMI, past president of SNMMI and chair of the society's Awards Committee. "Each year, the program provides two-to-three outstanding Japanese scientists in the field of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging with up to two years of funding to further their research in the United States or Canada under the guidance of current leaders in the field."
The 2017-2019 fellows, each receiving an annual stipend of $24,000 (U.S.), are:
- Sho Moriguchi, MD, Department of Psychiatry, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan -- His research interests focus on factors affecting pathophysiology of major depression disorder (MDD), including PET neuroimaging to investigate the norepinephrine transporter, a new neurobiological marker for MDD. He has established new PET analysis methods of quantification of norepinephrine transporter densities in the brain. For his two-year fellowship, he will continue his studies and research at the University of Toronto in Canada under the guidance of Jeffrey H. Meyer, MD, PhD, FRCP(C), Canada Research Chair in Neurochemistry of Major Depressive Disorder and head of Neurochemical Imaging in Mood Disorders at the Research Imaging Centre of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.
- Tomomi Nobashi, MD, Department of Diagnostic Imaging and Nuclear Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan -- With a keen interest in the respiratory system, she has conducted research on imaging sarcoidosis with the PET tracer 68Ga-DOTATOC, as well as research on FDG accumulation in patients with small cell lung cancer and interstitial lung diseases. Her one-year fellowship is at Stanford University in Stanford, California, under the guidance of Andrei H. Iagaru, associate professor of radiology/nuclear medicine at Stanford and chief of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Stanford Health Care.
The SNMMI Wagner-Torizuka Fellowship program, sponsored by Nihon Medi-Physics Co., Ltd., in Japan, has successfully graduated 27 fellows since its inauguration in 2008; currently, five fellows are studying at host institutions across the United States and Canada.
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Applications for the 2018-2020 SNMMI Wagner-Torizuka Fellowship open September 1, 2017, and close January 20, 2018. For further information on this fellowship and other grants, awards and scholarships, visit http://www.snmmi.org/grants or contact the SNMMI Development Department at (703) 652-6780 or tellmer@snmmi.org.
About the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging
The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) is an international scientific and medical organization dedicated to raising public awareness about nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, a vital element of today's medical practice that adds an additional dimension to diagnosis, changing the way common and devastating diseases are understood and treated and helping provide patients with the best health care possible.
SNMMI's more than 15,000 members set the standard for molecular imaging and nuclear medicine practice by creating guidelines, sharing information through journals and meetings and leading advocacy on key issues that affect molecular imaging and therapy research and practice. For more information, visit http://www.snmmi.org.