Honorary Membership

In recognition of his commitment to advancing radiology in Mexico and Latin America and boosting international cooperation with Europe, Professor Dante R. Casale Menier from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, will receive ESR Honorary Membership at ECR 2020.

Dante R. Casale Menier is head of imaging at Angeles Hospital in Ciudad Juarez, which is part of Grupo Angeles, the largest private medical provider in Mexico. Previously, he was head of imaging at Hospital Pensiones Civiles del Estado in Chihuahua for 28 years and head of the imaging department at Hospital Poliplaza Medica in Ciudad Juarez for 19 years.

He is president elect of the Mexican Board of Radiology (CMRI) for the 2019–2021 term.

Professor Casale Menier graduated from the Autonomous University of Ciudad Juarez in 1980 and did his radiology residency from 1984 to 1987 at the Centro Medico Nacional 20 de Noviembre, Institute of Social Security and Services for State Workers in Mexico City, where he became chief resident in his third year.

He obtained an honorary mention for high marks and the silver medal Gabino Barreda from the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He subsequently returned home to Ciudad Juarez Autonomous University, where he worked as a professor at the school of medicine until 2017.

His main research interests have been in breast imaging and obstetrics and gynaecology.

In 1989, he helped create and was appointed founding president of the first radiology society in Ciudad Juarez, the Sociedad de Radiologia e Imagen de Ciudad Juarez, which later became Colegio de Especialistas en Radiologia e Imagen de Ciudad Juarez.

Professor Casale Menier was the representative of the Society of Radiology of Cuidad Juarez to the Mexican Federation of Radiology and Imaging (FMRI) from 1989 to 2002. He was subsequently appointed FMRI secretary, president elect and president.

He received the FMRI Gold Medal in 2012 and Radiological Merit Award in 2018. He is currently the chair of the FMRI international affairs committee.

Professor Casale Menier became involved with the Colegio Interamericano de Radiología (CIR) in 2002 and served as CIR president in 2014. In 2018 he received honorary membership from the organisation. Most recently, he was also awarded honorary membership from the Sociedade Paulista de Radiologia e Diagnóstico por Imagem (SPR).

Honorary Membership

In recognition of his major contribution to ultrasound and abdominal imaging, and to homogenising education across Asia and Oceania, Professor Yi-Hong Chou from Taipei, Taiwan, will receive ESR Honorary Membership at ECR 2020.

Yi-Hong Chou is Chair and Professor of Radiology at Yuanpei University of Medical Technology and National Yang Ming University School of Medicine in Taipei, Taiwan. He is the former director of occupational safety and health administration and chief of medical ultrasound and breast imaging at Taipei Veterans General Hospital.

Prof. Chou is currently Vice President of the World Federation for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (WFUMB). He is the former president and chairman of the Education Committee of the Asian Federation of Societies for Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology (AFSUMB) and Society of Ultrasound in Medicine of the Republic of Taiwan (SUMROC), and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Ultrasound, the official journal of the AFSUMB.

His research has centred on ultrasound, especially in the breast, and abdominal imaging, as well as emergency imaging. Currently his research focuses on clinical and experimental studies on various aspects of tumour vascularity with regard to Doppler techniques and microbubble contrast agents, and interventional techniques in tumour ablation.

He is immediate past president of the Asian-Oceanian Society of Radiology (AOSR). He is also immediate past president of the Asian Society of Abdominal Radiology (ASAR) and the Asian Breast Diseases Association (ABDA) as well as former president of the SUMROC.

Prof. Chou has been active in scientific and educational programmes nationally and internationally, and has organised a number of international congresses, workshops and symposia, particularly on ultrasound, imaging of the liver, breast imaging, and emergency and critical care.

He has been awarded more than 37 honours internationally and domestically. He is an honorary member of the Japanese Society of Radiology, Japanese Society of Ultrasound in Medicine, Korean Society of Ultrasound in Medicine, and Korean Society of Radiology, as well as an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM). He is a gold medallist of ASAR, honorary speaker of the Society of Abdominal Radiology (SAR), honorary president of ACTA-Taipei, and honorary president of the World Interactive Network Focused On Critical Ultrasound (WINFOCUS) and World Congress of Ultrasound in Emergency and Critical Care.

Prof. Chou has authored 410 peer-reviewed publications and 395 abstracts since 1982, including 320 invited speeches. He has also published 18 chapters on various topics in ultrasound and radiology and has edited or co-edited five books on computer-aided imaging, breast imaging, imaging of acute abdomen, thoracic imaging, and contrast-enhanced ultrasound of the liver.

Honorary Membership

In recognition of her tremendous contribution to advancing radiology and particularly breast imaging, Professor Valerie P. Jackson from Tucson, Arizona, will receive ESR Honorary Membership at ECR 2020.

Valerie P. Jackson, MD, FACR, is the Eugene C. Klatte Professor Emeritus of Radiology at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She is the current President of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and Executive Director of the American Board of Radiology (ABR), where she served on the board of trustees from 2001 to 2010.

Professor Jackson graduated from Indiana University School of Medicine in 1978, where she went on to complete her radiology residency in 1982 and served on the faculty in numerous roles until 2014. She was notably Chair of Indiana University (IU) Radiology from 2003 to May 2014.

Professor Jackson has been involved in research, education and national service for many years, primarily in the areas of breast imaging and radiology education. She has authored more than 110 publications and numerous book chapters. She was an author and editor for two editions of Diagnosis of Diseases of the Breast, a major textbook on breast imaging. She has given more than 500 presentations on breast imaging, education, and leadership.

Professor Jackson has served as a manuscript reviewer for numerous journals, including American Journal of Roentgenology, Journal of the American College of Radiology, Investigative Radiology, Medical Physics, Academic Medicine, and Radiology, where she served as associate editor on the editorial board from 1989 to 1998, and as a consultant to the editor in 1999.

She is a past president of the Society of Breast Imaging (SBI) and the American College of Radiology (ACR). She has been awarded gold medals by the Indiana Radiological Society, SBI, ACR, and the Association of University Radiologists.

Gold Medallist

In recognition of his tremendous contribution to improving the working lives of radiologists, Doctor Richard FitzGerald from Wolverhampton, United Kingdom, will receive the ESR Gold Medal at ECR 2020.

Richard FitzGerald was a consultant radiologist at the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust in Wolverhampton, UK, between 1986 and 2017. He completed his undergraduate medical education in Cork, Ireland, and his radiology training in the West Midlands, UK.

Dr. FitzGerald has had a major influence on the Royal College of Radiologists’ (RCR) publications and professional standards for 20 years, initially as a regional chair, and subsequently as a member of the RCR Radiology Faculty Board, Standards Committee, Professional Support and Standards Board, and Council. He was vice president of the Royal College of Radiologists Faculty of Radiology between 2014 and 2017.

Dr. FitzGerald has consistently emphasised that it is not enough to set professional standards, however well worded, but that optimal performance for patients requires safe staffing levels and working conditions as well as an inclusive, supportive culture.

His major publications are on the regulation of radiologists and teleradiology, optimising radiologists' working lives and performance, supportive peer feedback and learning from reporting discrepancies. He has lectured extensively in the UK and across Europe to raise awareness of these issues.

He served as a UK General Medical Council radiologist assessor for twelve years and has also spent two decades providing mentorship to help radiologists in difficulty. His commitment to improving doctors’ working lives, and thereby their service to patients, also included membership of various British Medical Association committees for almost 14 years.

As RCR Vice President, Dr. FitzGerald promoted international recruitment of radiologists and support for radiologists new to the UK. He also represented UK radiologists within the Union of European Medical Specialists and the European Society of Radiology between 2002 and 2014, and was a member of the ESR Management in Radiology Subcommittee from 2010 to 2014.

In 2011, he encouraged the Jo Li Trust to establish an annual European School of Radiology Scholarship for Chinese radiologists to spend three months at University Hospital Birmingham.

Dr. FitzGerald has provided advice to the ESR on teleradiology regulation and EU legislation such as the EU Professional Qualifications Directive 2004–2005, the EU Directive on the application of patient’s rights in cross-border healthcare 2008–2011, and the EU-USA negotiations on a proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership 2013–2015.

He has received many awards for his work, including Honorary Membership of the British Society of Interventional Radiology, the Exceptional Contribution Award of the Royal College of Radiologists, and Honorary Fellowship of the Faculty of Radiologists, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

Gold Medallist

In recognition of his pioneering work in interventional radiology and outspoken advocacy for image-guided treatment and evidence-based science, Professor Jim Reekers from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, will receive the ESR Gold Medal at ECR 2020.

Jim Reekers is professor emeritus of radiology at Amsterdam University. Although he is now retired, he is still very active and feels inspired to continue helping to advance interventional radiology, a field that he greatly helped to develop in the late 1980s.

Professor Reekers received his medical degree from Amsterdam University in 1981. During medical school, he became very interested in the new technological possibilities of medical imaging and especially the opportunities to use imaging for patient treatment. He dropped his initial plan to become a vascular surgeon and obtained his board certification in radiology in 1986, after which he became a staff member at Amsterdam University’s academic teaching hospital, the Amsterdam Medical Centre (AMC). He finished his doctoral thesis in 1994 and was appointed professor of radiology at Amsterdam University in 1999. He worked at the AMC until he retired as a clinical staff member in 2019.

Professor Reekers was one of the early leaders in interventional radiology. Early on, he recognised the potential of image-guided treatments and developed a special interventional section within the AMC’s department of radiology. Throughout his career, he has developed many new techniques and devices. He is notably the co-inventor of subintimal angioplasty, the hydrolyser thrombectomy catheter, the optease caval filter and the Reekross catheter. He was one of the first physicians to pioneer extreme crural revascularisations.

Next to his research in the field of uterine fibroid embolisation and vascular interventions, he has focused on treatment of diabetic foot disease for the past fifteen years and, more recently, perfusion imaging.

Professor Reekers has always spoken out for evidence-based medicine and is a famous critic of using new interventional technologies without proper clinical evidence. He is straightforward and outspoken about the influence of the pharmacological industry on organising so-called ‘evidence’. He is convinced that evidence-based science is the only way to survive as a small specialty.

During his 36 years at the AMC, he trained many young interventional radiologists, wrote various books and book chapters, and published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers about interventional radiology.

Next to his academic work, he has always been a strong advocate for image-guided treatment and has given more than 600 lectures all over the world. He is currently the editor-in-chief of CVIRendovascular and he has served as president of several national and international organisations, such as the Cardiovascular and Interventional Radiological Society of Europe (CIRSE) and the interventional radiology division of the European Union of Medical Specialists (UEMS). Professor Reekers is an honorary member of many international organisations, and has given the SIR Dotter lecture, the CIRSE Gruentzig lecture, the BSIR Wattie Fletcher lecture and the DRG Röntgen lecture. He initiated the European Curriculum for Interventional Radiology and the European Board of Interventional Radiology (EBIR) examination, which is now the standard for the field.

Gold Medallist

In recognition of her amazing accomplishments and leading role in hybrid, molecular and translational imaging, Professor Katrine Riklund from Umeå, Sweden, will receive the ESR Gold Medal at ECR 2020.

Katrine Riklund, MD, PhD is full professor and senior consultant in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine and pro-vice-chancellor of Umeå University. She previously headed both the clinical department of radiology and nuclear medicine at Umeå University Hospital and was head or deputy head of the university department of radiation sciences for more than ten years.

She served as deputy dean and in various leadership roles at the medical faculty of Umeå University and was programme director of the medical school between 2011 and 2016.

Professor Riklund graduated from Umeå University in 1988 and obtained her licenses in radiology and nuclear medicine in 1994 and 1997, respectively. She defended her PhD thesis on radioimmunoscintigraphy and radioimmunotherapy in 1992.

Professor Riklund started her work in translational research between immunology and nuclear medicine by developing and evaluating monoclonal antibodies in the diagnosis and treatment of gynaecological cancers. She continued her research in hybrid imaging in cognition, neurodegeneration and movement disorders, as well as in prostate and colorectal cancer.

To pursue all her interests, she has been using SPECT/CT, PET/CT and PET/MR extensively in oncology, also with a special focus on dopamine in cognitive decline. She has authored 130 scientific papers, five reviews, 48 meeting abstracts or proceeding papers and six book chapters. She is also the editor of one book, Nuklearmedicin, published in 2013 in Swedish.

Professor Riklund has served in many leadership roles for the European Society of Radiology (ESR) since 2009. She has been Chair of the Finance Committee and a member of the Education Committee and the Scientific Committee of the European Training Assessment Programme. She was the first Chairperson of the ESR Board of Directors and Executive Council from 2016 to 2017 and is the founding president of the European Society of Hybrid Medical Imaging, which later became the European Society for Hybrid, Molecular and Translational Imaging – ESHIMT.

Professor Riklund has made many substantial contributions to the European Congress of Radiology (ECR), serving as its President in 2016 and as a member of the Congress Committee before that.

Radiation protection in medicine is another of her interests and between 2009 and 2015, she was an ordinary member of the C3 subcommittee of the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). She is still a member of Task Group 36: ‘Radiation Doses to Patients in Diagnostic Nuclear Medicine’ and the ESR Radiation Protection Subcommittee today.

Professor Riklund is the Past President of the Swedish Society of Radiology and the Swedish Society of Nuclear Medicine. She is the chairperson of the Centre for Medical Image Science and Visualisation at Linköping University, as well as the Centre for Functional Brain Imaging and the Wallenberg Centre for Molecular Medicine at Umeå University. She is also an ordinary board member of the national facilities SciLifeLab, MedTech4Health and the scientific board of the Swedish Drug Authority. She has served as a grant evaluator for the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, the Swedish Cancer Society and the Swedish Research Council.

She gave the Marie Curie Honorary Lecture at ECR 2018, has received honorary membership from the French Society of Radiology and the RSNA, and was awarded the Alfred Breit Price by the German Radiology Society in 2019.

Plenary Lecturer

In recognition of his role in advancing the field of medical imaging, Doctor Bernd Montag from Erlangen, Germany, will present the Plenary Lecture entitled ‘Digitalisation: the journey to a more human healthcare’ at ECR 2020.

Bernd Montag, PhD, is CEO of Siemens Healthineers in Erlangen, Germany. He was born in Munich in 1969 and completed his studies in physics at the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he earned a PhD in theoretical multi-particle physics in 1995.

Dr. Montag started working as a scientific assistant at the institute of theoretical physics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Erlangen in 1993.

Two years later, he joined Siemens, where he held positions in corporate quality management and sales in the hearing aid division. In 1999 he moved to imaging systems, where he served as a product manager for computed tomography and as the head of marketing for magnetic resonance business. In 2004 he assumed overall responsibility for computed tomography and in 2008 he was named president of the Imaging & Therapy Division, which combined the overall business of diagnostic imaging and image-guided therapies.

In February 2015 he was named CEO of Siemens Healthcare. As of March 2018, the company is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange as Siemens Healthineers AG (SHL).

Siemens Healthineers has already received a number of awards for the quality and innovation of its products and solutions.

Plenary Lecturer

In recognition of his pioneering work in demonstrating the function and evolution of the human brain, Professor Nenad Šestan from New Haven, Connecticut, USA, has been invited to present the Plenary Lecture entitled ‘Building the human brain: molecular logic of neural circuit formation’ at ECR 2020.

Nenad Šestan is the Harvey and Kate Cushing Professor of Neuroscience, Genetics, Psychiatry and Comparative Medicine at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He is also Executive Director of the Yale Genome Editing Center.

He received his medical degree from Zagreb University School of Medicine in Croatia in 1995 and went on to obtain his PhD and postdoc in neurobiology at Yale University. He started working as assistant professor at the department of neurobiology of Yale University in 2002 and has remained on the faculty ever since.

Professor Šestan’s research focuses on understanding the molecular and cellular basis of how neurons acquire distinct identities and form proper connections in the cerebral cortex, the outside part of the mammalian brain that processes senses, commands motor activity, and helps humans perform higher-order cognitive functions like language. He also studies how these complex processes were modified during human evolution and may become compromised in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Most recently, his laboratory developed technology for restoring brain circulation and cell function following prolonged circulatory arrest and global anoxia.

Professor Šestan has authored or co-authored more than 90 publications on these topics. He has been honoured with many awards, most recently the Constance Lieber Prize in 2019. He also holds corresponding membership of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU), and has received the 2014 BRAIN Initiative Award from the National Institutes of Health, the 2012 NARSAD Distinguished Investigator Grant from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation and the 2012 Krieg Cortical Discoverer Award from the Cajal Club.

Plenary Lecturer

In recognition of his role in advancing molecular and cellular imaging technologies, Professor Ralph Weissleder from Boston, Massachusetts, USA, will present the Plenary Lecture entitled ‘Imaging at a different scale: the wild lives of our cells’ at ECR 2020.

Ralph Weissleder is the James Thrall Professor of Radiology and Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), director of the Center for Systems Biology and attending clinician in interventional radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). He is also a member of the Department of Systems Biology at HMS and the Dana Farber Harvard Cancer Center.

Professor Weissleder graduated at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and completed his radiology residency training at MGH in 1991. He has been on the Harvard faculty ever since.

Professor Weissleder is best known for his vision of and research in molecular imaging. He created one of the first centres for molecular imaging research at MGH back in 1994. Professor Weissleder’s more recent research is focused on creating new technologies for the development of medicines and diagnostics, including approaches at the interface of chemistry, biology and engineering. His world-renowned expertise, combined with his passion for innovative solutions have led to the development of new tools for the early detection of cancer, bacterial analyses and new miniaturised sensing technologies. Using these tools, his goals are to obtain quantitative and systems-wide global measurements, to perform dynamic serial measurements, to integrate multiple and various data sets into models, and to enable earlier, faster and simpler diagnostics. His recent work has been focused on translational aspects such as cancer phenotyping in single cells, large-scale analysis of new sensing approaches and providing diagnostic solutions for global health. Several of Professor Weissleder’s research developments are in clinical trials or are being commercialised.

He has published more than 930 publications in peer-reviewed journals and authored several textbooks. He has an h-index of 185 and ranks among the top one hundred scientists in the world, according to international rankings.

Professor Weissleder is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Inventors and the German Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina). His work has been honoured with numerous awards including the J. Taylor International Prize in Medicine, the Millennium Pharmaceuticals Innovator Award, the AUR Memorial Award, the ARRS President’s Award, the Society for Molecular Imaging Lifetime Achievement Award, the 2006 Academy of Molecular Imaging Distinguished Basic Scientist Award and the 2008 RSNA Outstanding Researcher Award. He is also an ESR Gold Medallist.