Congratulations to Dr. Vesna Sossi on the prestigious honour of being named an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellow! She is one of the first two women ever from the Nuclear Medical and Imaging Sciences Council (NMISC) community to be elevated to IEEE Fellow. She was awarded Fellow status “for contributions to quantitative and translational brain PET imaging.”
Recognizing the achievements of its members is an important part of the mission of the IEEE. Each year, following a rigorous evaluation procedure, the IEEE Fellow Committee recommends a select group of recipients for elevation to IEEE Fellow. Less than 0.1% of voting members are selected annually for this member grade elevation.
At UBC, Dr. Sossi is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a researcher at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, where she also directs the PET/MRI imaging in the Charles E. Fipke Integrated Neuroimaging Suite. In addition, she is an associate member in the School of Biomedical Engineering and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Medicine.
Her main area of interest is developing multimodality imaging methods to enhance the investigation of neurochemical mechanisms that lead to an increased risk of Parkinson’s disease. Other areas of interest include PET and MRI image analysis, instrumentation and multi-modal, multi-parameter data analysis. Dr. Sossi has worked in many areas ranging from instrumentation-related topics such as the development of data reconstruction and quantification algorithms, design and development of a preclinical MR-compatible PET insert, to more applied areas such as the development of novel analysis methods for multi-tracer PET data, which has led to new insights into neurodegeneration.
Dr. Sossi has published more than 220 peer-reviewed papers, is funded by several granting agencies including the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Institute, and sits on several national and international review panels.
