CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT ELECT
Joe Culver, Professor, Washington University St. Louis, USA
Biosketch: Prof. Culver earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Washington, Seattle and his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Pennsylvania with Prof. Robin Hochstrasser and Prof. Arjun G. Yodh developing ultrafast laser spectroscopy in 1997. For a postdoc, Dr. Culver switched to the field of Biomedical Optics, and worked with Prof. Britton Chance and once more with Prof. Yodh. He then took an Instructor faculty position (2001-2003) at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in the Department of Radiology working in the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging with Prof. David Boas. In 2003 he moved to Washington University to join the Radiology Faculty as an Assistant Professor. His previous trainees have gone onto faculty appointments at institutions that include University of Pennsylvania, University of Indiana and Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to his research endeavors, at Washington University he has led several initiatives in the Imaging Sciences, most prominently among them the development of a new Imaging Sciences PhD program, one of two in the United States, for which he currently serves as Co-Director.
Motivation: Dr. Culver is one of the founding members of fNIRS Society and over the years, he has demonstrated strong support for the fNIRS Society, including co-chairing the fNIRS 2016 annual meeting. In addition to his research endeavors, at Washington University in St. Louis he has led several initiatives in the Imaging Sciences, most prominently among them the development of a new Imaging Sciences PhD program, one of two in the United States, for which he currently serves as Co-Director. As president he will bring that leadership experience to further strengthen the Society by increasing visibility and outreach, creating more opportunities for a solid interdisciplinary environment and most importantly by supporting young and new fNIRS investigators.
Ippeita Dan, Professor, Chuo University, Japan
Biosketch: Ippeita Dan graduated from International Christian University in 1993 and received his PhD from the University of Tokyo Japan, in 2002. He was a Senior Researcher at National Food Research Institute, and was an associate professor at Jichi Medical University, Tochigi, Japan. He was appointed as a professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan in 2013. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, attracting about 9000 citations. He has been a BoD of SfNIRS since 2016. He has served as an associate editor of Neurophotonics since its launch in 2012. His most notable research contribution to fNIRS community is development of spatial registration methods of fNIRS data to the standard brain coordinate systems, and thereby to macroanatomical cortical structures, allowing inter-modal cross reference. He is scheduled to co-chair fNIRS 2022 (2020 postponed to) in Boston with Prof. Maria Angela Franceschini.
Motivation: Visitor-friendly society for non-fNIRS specialists is my goal to realize.
What is the shape of SfNIRS to come after the COVID-19 calamity is over? Upon being nominated for president-elect, I have been thinking about this question. Everything becomes virtual? We may be too tired for all being done online. Instead, we may want something social, but to a comfortable degree. This would make us seek for excessive social stability. Indeed, I feel that the current SfNIRS is comfortable. From another perspective, however, we might just stay in a closed academic territory. As the horizon of fNIRS research expands, we face an increasing need to interact with researchers who are not specialized in fNIRS. They might simply use fNIRS as a convenient tool to investigate brain functions, just instead of EEG or fMRI. I would like them to join the society or just visit us at least. Practically speaking, the most effective way is to introduce a “free membership trial”, where anyone who is interested in SfNIRS can become its member for free for one year. This allows them to participate in an onsite or virtual conference. I will pledge to realize this idea upon being elected. Well, might it also be a good idea to ask Joe to do it? Maybe.
CANDIDATES FOR TREASURER ELECT
Stefan Carp, Assistant Professor, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA
Biosketch: Dr. Stefan Carp is an Assistant Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and a co-Director of the Optics group at the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging. Dr. Carp received Chemistry and Chemical Engineering B.S. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Biomedical Optics from the University of California, Irvine in 2005, with a focus on non-contact photoacoustic imaging. He then joined Dr. David Boas’ research group at the Massachusetts General Hospital as a research fellow, where he was later promoted as a faculty member based on his track record of scholarship and funding. Dr. Carp is an Associate Editor for Neurophotonics and has served on a number of NIH and DoD review panels.
Motivation: I’ve been a member of the Society since its beginning and I found it provides an outstanding forum for the technology developers and practitioners to congregate and further drive the development of the field, cementing the position of fNIRS as an established neuroimaging technique on par with fMRI. My qualifications for the position of treasurer stem from my experience managing 10+ project budgets over my academic career and I am also a volunteer member of my town’s finance committee. I would like to contribute my effort to facilitate the operation of our society and support its important mission to provide a center point for the fNIRS community.
CANDIDATES FOR THE BOARD
Hasan Ayaz Associate Research Professor, School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, Drexel University, USA
Biosketch: Hasan Ayaz is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Drexel University, with adjunct affiliations at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and a core member of the Cognitive Neuroengineering and Quantitative Experimental Research (CoNQuER) Collaborative. He received his BSc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in 2003 at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Türkiye with high honors, and received his MSc & PhD in Biomedical Engineering in 2010 from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Starting in 2001, he worked on the development of miniaturized continuous wave near infrared spectroscopy sensors focusing on brain imaging in natural environments and everyday settings. He has designed and developed enabling software for brain monitoring instruments that are now utilized routinely for clinical and field research in university, government and corporate research labs. As an extension to this, he led the software design and development of the first optical-brain-monitoring medical device, Infrascanner, which is a portable-handheld instrument that utilizes near infrared to detect hematoma in head trauma patients.
Motivation: SfNIRS is a vital catalyst for the growth of the fNIRS field in general. It requires the entire community to cooperate and contribute in order to catapult the field to its full potential. Dr. Ayaz will be representing researchers from both the users and the developers of fNIRS.
Sabrina Brigadoi (University of Padua, Italy)
Biosketch: Sabrina Brigadoi is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology of the University of Padova. She studied Bioengineering before receiving her PhD in Psychological Sciences from the University of Padova, Italy. She started working with fNIRS in 2011 when she started her PhD. During her PhD she spent a visiting period at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging under the supervision of Prof. David Boas, working on motion correction of fNIRS data, and a visiting period at the Biomedical Optics Research Laboratory, at University College London, under the supervision of Dr. Rob Cooper, working on a preterm to term atlas for DOT. After her PhD, she spent one year as post-doctoral fellow at UCL, working on short-separation channels, real-time image reconstruction and reconstruction of the first cytochrome c oxidase images. In 2015 she came back as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Padova, working on both development of fNIRS methods and its application for the study of different cognitive processes in both adults and infants. In 2018, she was awarded a starting grant from the University of Padova to apply diffuse optical methods on the very preterm population. Since 2019, she is an Assistant Professor in General Psychology.
Motivation: I am applying for a position on the Board of Directors of the SfNIRS society because I am interested in disseminating guidelines and tools that could ease the application of optical techniques to clinical and healthy populations and ease researchers’ life replying to some of the sometimes-unanswered questions relative to optimal processing of fNIRS data, experimental set-up, etc. I am a member of both the Communication Committee and the Webinar Committee, and I enjoyed being part of both committees, helping the society to grow and share their internal interests. With my multidisciplinary background, I think I could be a good representative of both the interests of developers and those of cognitive neuroscientists, boosting the opportunities for both categories, and improving the communication between developers and users.
Erin Buckley (Georgia Institute of Technology & Emory University, USA)
Biosketch: Dr. Buckley is an Assistant Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech & Emory and the Department of Pediatrics at Emory University. She received her PhD from the Department of Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011, and she completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Neurology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and in the Department of Radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her research focuses on the development and validation of diffuse optical spectroscopies for noninvasive, low-cost bedside monitoring of cerebral hemodynamics. Her work has been published in leading journals, including Neurophotonics, Neurobiology of Disease, and Biomedical Optics Express. Dr. Buckley is the recipient of numerous federally funded (NIH, DoD) and industry sponsored awards.
Motivation: I am excited to apply for a position on the fNIRS board. Since its inception, fNIRS has fostered community within our relatively small, tight knit field, it has provided opportunities to discuss and disseminate latest scientific developments, and it facilitates new collaborations. It also provides a powerful platform to promote and support best practices for NIRS data acquisition, analysis, and dissemination. I am eager to serve on the board of this excellent organization to do my part to contribute to the society’s mission.
Aaron Buss (University of Tennessee, USA)
Biosketch: Dr. Buss received his PhD in Psychology from the University of Iowa in December 2013. From 2014-2020 he was Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2020 he was promoted to Associate Professor of Psychology with tenure. Dr. Buss is the PI of the Attention, Brain, and Cognition Lab (abclabutk.weebly.com). The lab houses two TechEN CW7 systems and two Artinis Brite MKII systems. The lab is currently funded by a 5-year $1.1 million grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Development (US NIH). Dr. Buss has published 5 peer-reviewed manuscripts both as lead author and with student lead authors. In addition, he currently has 5 other papers under review or revision using fNIRS data.
Motivation: By serving on the board of the Society for fNIRS, Dr. Buss hopes to contribute to the organization of the society and further cultivate his connections to other researchers in the field. A central goal of Dr. Buss’ research is to understand how the brain gives rise to cognition. To do requires maintaining close contact between cognitive science and neuroscience so that robust tasks can be used in ways that are amenable to analyzing hemodynamics. Further, there is a critical need for theories to inform questions that we pose in our research. Dr. Buss would work to keep these issues as a key focus for the future.
Rob Cooper (University College London, UK)
Biosketch: Dr. Rob Cooper is an UK-EPSRC Early Career Fellow , Lecturer, and founder of the DOT-HUB research group at UCL (www.ucl.ac.uk/dot-hub). He studied at Oxford and UCL before taking his first post-doctoral role at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging under Prof. David Boas before eventually returning to UCL and obtaining an academic post. Rob’s research focusses on the development, demonstration and dissemination of tools (both in hardware and software) that advance fNIRS and diffuse optical tomography methods for users across neuroscience and clinical research. In the last few years, he has been the driving force behind the development and adoption of wearable, high-density optical imaging devices, and his work has resulted in numerous similar strands of research emerging across academia and industry. In addition to being a leader in HD-DOT technologies, Dr. Cooper has extensive experience of developmental research, and his clinical focus remains the newborn infant brain. He has a long-standing collaboration with the Rosie Maternity Hospital, Cambridge and with the University of Cambridge Babylab.
Motivation: When I was first elected to the SFNIRS board, I was the youngest and only non-tenured member of the board. I have used my time on the board to learn as much as possible about the processes involved in the successful operation of the society from the many more experienced members, and now believe I have a lot to contribute to SFNIRS over the coming years. I am particularly committed to furthering the goals of the education committee and improving analysis standardization as the field inevitably moves to whole-scalp high-density measurements over the next few years.
Ippeita Dan, Professor, Chuo University, Japan
Biosketch: Ippeita Dan graduated from International Christian University in 1993 and received his PhD from the University of Tokyo Japan, in 2002. He was a Senior Researcher at National Food Research Institute, and was an associate professor at Jichi Medical University, Tochigi, Japan. He was appointed as a professor at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan in 2013. He has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed articles, attracting about 9000 citations. He has been a BoD of SfNIRS since 2016. He has served as an associate editor of Neurophotonics since its launch in 2012. His most notable research contribution to fNIRS community is development of spatial registration methods of fNIRS data to the standard brain coordinate systems, and thereby to macroanatomical cortical structures, allowing inter-modal cross reference. He is scheduled to co-chair fNIRS 2022 (2020 postponed to) in Boston with Prof. Maria Angela Franceschini.
Motivation: My first plan was to host fNIRS 2020 and finish my term as a BoD. Unfortunately, due to the Covid-19 spreading, the conference was postponed. Primarily, this made me decide to serve one more term as a BoD of SfNIRS if being approved by SfNIRS members. Then, in fNIRS 2022 in Boston, I will do my best to ensure friendly atmosphere of SfNIRS conference. The primary function of conference may be to facilitate academic interaction, but this is a bit difficult to achieve in online conferences. This does not necessarily mean that we should stick to pre-Covid-19 style with everything being on-site. Rather, with development of innovative online tools and making the best use of them, we can develop an ideal post-Covid-19 conference style. The key issue would be to make it so-so digital to achieve non-stressful environment. Simply put, we would like to enjoy nice coffee and sweets in a coffee break after thinking hard, and maybe enjoy good beer after hard use of the brain. Too much stress is against them. After fNIRS2022, hopefully it being successful, I will wrap up a review of it, and propose a shape of sustainable friendly fNIRS conferences to come in future.
Judit Gervain (University of Padua, Italy)
Biosketch: I am a Full Professor at the Department of Developmental and Social Psychology at the University of Padua, Italy and a Senior Researcher at the Integrative Neuroscience and Cognition Center, CNRS and University of Paris, France. Originally trained as a theoretical linguistic, I obtained my PhD in 2007 in Cognitive Neuroscience under the mentorship of Jacques Mehler from SISSA, Trieste, Italy. I worked as a post doctoral researcher at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. In 2009, I took up a researcher position at the CNRS, in Paris, France, from which I moved to the University of Padua in 2020. I currently have an ERC Consolidator grant investigating the neural basis of language development using NIRS, EEG and behavioral techniques. I am an associate editor at Neurophotonics, Developmental Science and Cognition. I was the local organizer of the 2016 meeting of the SfNIRS held in Paris, and since then I have served on the Board. I also chair the Education Committee, which among many other activities, runs the Educational Tutorial series.
Motivation: I have been conducting NIRS research since the very beginning of my career. I have used the technique with various populations, in different countries. In addition to using the technique to address my research questions, I have also contributed to the improvement of the methodology, especially in developmental populations (Gervain et al. 2011, Issard & Gervain 2018, Yücel et al. 2021). I have seen NIRS research progress from the early multichannel devices used to query a single sensory modality to the current high-density, wearable, multimodal systems employed to assess complex, ecologically valid behaviors and cognitive processes. I am passionate about taking NIRS research to the next level. I have been involved in the fNIRS community and in the SfNIRS, since its very conception at the first, foundational meeting in 2010 as an invited speaker, as a local organizers in 2016 of the Paris meeting, as well as a Board member and the Chair of the Education committee since 2016. I am running to be re-elected as a Board member to be able to continue serving our community and contributing to its growth.
Christophe Grova (Concordia University, Canada)
Biosketch: I received my Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from University of Rennes in France in 2003, before starting a postdoctoral fellowship at the Montreal Neurological Institute (McGill University, Montreal, Canada), where I initiated research projects involving electrophysiology (EEG/MEG source imaging) and neuroimaging (simultaneous EEG/fMRI), applied in epilepsy. Recruited in 2008 as assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering Dpt of McGill University, I funded the Multimodal Imaging Functional Laboratory, dedicated in multimodal investigations of physiological and pathological brain processes. Our main expertise in the lab is within the context of EEG/MEG source localization and multimodal imaging (EEG, MEG, fMRI, fNIRS) and we also created at McGill a first laboratory dedicated to prolonged EEG/fNIRS monitoring of epileptic activity. In July 2014, I joined the department of Physics at Concordia University and the PERFORM center, a new multimodal imaging center, dedicated to promote research projects involving prevention in health. At PERFORM our lab activity are focusing on research combining multimodal imaging and realistic lifestyle experiences (sleep, physical exercise). In July 2017, I have been promoted to tenure Associate Professor at Concordia University, remaining adjunct Professor in both Biomedical Engineering and Neurology and Neurosurgery departments at McGill University and affiliated to the epilepsy group of the Montreal Neurological Institute. At PERFORM centre, I am also the scientific director of a new platform (among 8 others), the physiology platform, dedicated to brain imaging in realistic lifestyle conditions, featuring EEG (high-density, MR-compatible), fNIRS (standard and wireless), 3D motion capture, virtual reality and TMS.
Motivation: With my background in multimodal imaging and inverse problem modeling, I would like to get involved in SfNIRS to strengthen the methodological links between EEG/MEG source imaging, fMRI multivariate analysis and fNIRS advanced statistical analysis. My overall objective is to propose and validate new methods, while ensuring a large access to our community. In this context, my team recently released NIRSTORM, a fNIRS software plugin attached to Brainstorm software (https://github.com/Nirstorm/nirstorm/wiki). Brainstorm being one of the most renowned software dedicated to EEG/MEG data analysis, NIRSTORM package offers both standard and advanced fNIRS methodology (optimal montage, MEM reconstruction, statistical analysis), while offering advanced databasing, visualization, signal processing, source localization and statistical analysis methods. My team has been actively involved in training our local fNIRS community. I was in charge of the organization of fNIRS 2014 educational session in Montreal and with my team, we then organized two NIRSTORM workshops in Montreal in May 2018 and January 2020. Since 2018, I joined the SfNIRS educational committee, and we recently contributed to the 4th SfNIRS Educational Tutorial, by presenting a webinar on our package (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uX2oDtg9j8). Getting involved in the board of directors of SfNIRS, I hope I could provide relevant expertise in methodology and multimodal imaging, while pursuing our training and provide access to new softwares at the level of our whole society.
David Highton (University of Queensland, Australia)
Biosketch: David is deputy director of Anaesthesia at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, with a sub-specialist interest in neuroanaesthesia and an established research track record in perioperative neurosciences. He trained in New Zealand and the United Kingdom, dual qualifying in ICU and Anaesthesia including neuroanaesthesia, neurocritical care and PhD at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and Institute of Neurology, University College London examining near infrared spectroscopy in brain injured patients. Presently David serves on the Australia and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists Clinical Trials Network executive, The Journal for Neurosurgical Anesthesiology editorial board, Neuroanaesthesia Special Intrest Group executive committee and the Society for Neuroscience in Anesthesiology and Critical Care academic affairs committee and is a convener of the NIRStralia fNIRS meetings.
Motivation: I would be delighted to be considered for the fNIRS society board as I have an ongoing commitment to research in this field and believe NIRS will prove instrumental to understanding many critical physiological and clinical questions. In my particular research area it is one of the only techniques suited to examine perioperative brain function and I am passionate about supporting the development of this field as I believe it will prove instrumental to understand and prevent a wide range of disabling neurological disorders encountered in this setting. I have demonstrated this commitment via continued engagement with the fNIRS community and organising the “NIRStralia” fNIRS meetings, most notably in conjunction with the NIR2019 international meeting (Society for Near Infrared Spectroscopy).
Rickson Mesquita (University of Campinas, Brazil)
Biosketch: I am an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. I have a major and a Ph.D. in Physics from the same University. After spending over a year as a research scholar at the Massachusetts General Hospital, I was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. I started my path in diffuse optics by transitioning from functional MRI to fNIRS during my Ph.D. after developing a multimodal approach to measure brain metabolism and neurovascular coupling. Even nowadays, I am interested in developing biophysical models to understand better neurovascular coupling and its consequence on the interpretation of near-infrared spectroscopy. Later, I focused on diffuse correlation spectroscopy, and since then, I have contributed to the field by validating diffuse correlation spectroscopy as a noninvasive blood flow marker in several ways. Over the past years, I have been interested in finding methodological solutions to overcome NIRS intrinsic limitations and provide more accurate data.
Motivation: I have always been an active researcher in functional near-infrared spectroscopy. I have interacted with several other researchers, research groups, and companies to find new ways to expand the field. Over the past years, I have committed to SfNIRS by being part of the Education Committee and, more recently, chairing the SfNIRS Research webinar series. I believe that the opportunity to be part of the SfNIRS Board of Directors will strengthen my efforts to advance our Society and the NIRS field in general.
Haijing Niu (Beijing Normal University, China)
Biosketch: Haijing Niu is an Associate Professor of IDG/McGovern Institute for Brain Research & National Key Lab of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning at Beijing Normal University, China. She has nearly 15 years of fNIRS research experience since her Ph. D. in 2006. Her early research focused on 3D image reconstruction of diffuse optical tomography imaging. Her current research focuses on the development of human brain network in typical and atypical infants and children using resting-state functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) imaging
Motivation: Haijing Niu is a hard-working and enterprising scientist. She worked with Prof. Maria Angela Franceschini as a visiting scholar at Harvard Medical School in 2017 and with Prof. Hanli Liu as a postdoctoral at UT Arlington in 2009, respectively. She has gained rich research experience from these training that significantly contributed to her professional skill development. She is also passionate and easy going. She has been establishing wide collaborations with a diversity of research labs domestically and nationwide. In addition, she is actively involved with academic activities and society organization (e.g., the Society for Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy) towards learning, collaborations, and services. Moreover, she organized the fNIRS 2021 Virtual Meeting as one of Organizing Committee Board Member. Besides, she has served as an ad hoc reviewer for journals such as Neurophtonics, Biomedical Optics Express, Cerebral Cortex, NeuroImage and has reviewed important projects for the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Beijing Natural Science Foundation.
Felipe Orihuela-Espina (Current INAOE, Mexico – University of Birmingham, UK as from September 2021)
Biosketch: Dr. Orihuela-Espina obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2005. Afterwards, he moved to Mexico where he was appointed lecturer at the Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Mexico (UAEMex). He joined Imperial College as a research associate in 2007 and later in 2011 became postdoctoral associated at the Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE). He remained linked to Imperial College as honorary lecturer until 2015. In 2012 he joined INAOE as faculty where he is currently Reader and leads the group on functional optical neuroimaging within the Biosignals Processing Lab. He is currently a member of the Mexican National Researchers Systems (SNI 2). He has attracted funding as PI for over 8m MXN, and authored over 90 full-length original research articles including over 45 JCR indexed journal papers. He has carried out research secondments at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), University College London (UK) and Bosphorus University (Turkey), and a sabbatical at MGH/HST Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging (USA). He is the developer of ICNNA, an fNIRS analysis software tool with manifold-based analysis capabilities. He is a pioneer in introducing fNIRS in Mexico.
Motivation: fNIRS is unique neuroimaging modality with an incredible potential to finally breach the traditional boundaries of high end research labs and hospitals. Middle- and low-income countries will particularly greatly benefit by the wider availability and adoption of fNIRS. Having worked in Mexico for the last 10 years, Dr. Orihuela-Espina will bring a first-hand point of view from the Latin-American countries, a region of the world still underrepresented in the fNIRS community.
Rebecca Re (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)
Biosketch: Rebecca Re was born in in 1984. She received her B.Sc. degree and M.Sc. degree in Physics Engineering (Optics and Photonics) in 2006 and 2008 respectively. In 2012 she obtained the PhD in physics with a thesis entitled: “Development and applications of a time domain near infrared spectroscopy instrument based on wavelength space multiplexing”. From March to September 2011 she spent 6 months at the “Abramson center for the future of health”, in Houston (Texas USA), where she worked in collaboration with the Methodist hospital and NASA. In 2012 she was awarded with the “D. F. Bruley travel award”. From 2012 to 2017 she worked as Post. Doc. at the Department of Physics, Politecnico di Milano. In February 2017 she become a Junior Researcher and from November 2019 a Senior Researcher at the same institution. She is author of more than 25 publications on international journals and more than 35 conference papers. She worked as reviewer for more than 20 international peer review journals and for international conferences and projects. She was member of different conferences’ Technical Program Committee (fNIRS, ifNIRS, ICBEB and ECBO). She has participated in more than 15 funded projects and in more than 60 contributions to conferences.
Motivation: In past years, I have attended some conferences of our society (face-to-face or virtual) and I find them an indispensable moment for all of us, but especially for young people, to get in touch with our incredible community and feel part of it. It is an honor for me, to be part of the organizing committee for the virtual fNIRS2021. Working on this event I have understood how serious and fundamental is the contribution of all the members of the fNIRS society (senior and not), and I will be glad to work together with all of SfNIRS board for supporting concretely our society.
Piotr Sawosz (IBIB PAN, Warsaw, Poland)
Biosketch: I’ve graduated from department of Technical Physics and Applied Math Warsaw University of Technology. I worked on a method using optical vortices to asses a phase of light and it was a moment when my love for the light began. Currently I work at Nalecz Institute of Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering (IBIB) where I got my PhD in 2013. My thesis was related to applying time-resolved CCD camera for a brain imaging under supervision of Prof Adam Liebert.
Currently I am the associate professor and I run the lab for Biomedical Optics. My field of interest is focused on application of light in medical diagnosis. I feel the strong need to contribute to the improvement of brain diagnostics, which in many medical procedures is neglected for reasons I do not understand. I collaborate a lot with medical doctors. In my spare time I like to be with my family, but also I do like riding a bike, swimming, sailing and fixing my old car.
Motivation: The moment when I was for the first time in a hospital during the NIRS measurement the most important moment in my career, and even after many years now when take part in clinical studies I feel exactly the same. I consider fNIRS to be something more than studying a response for a stimulation in healthy subjects. I think, that primarily it is a very useful tool for patient examination e.g patients with neurodegenerative changes or Autism spectrum patients. I am using 32 channel time-resolved NIRS system to study connectivity and I strongly believe it would be beneficial in medical diagnosis. I would like to be useful in this area of research.
Sungho Tak (Korea Basic Science Institute, Korea)
Biosketch: Sungho Tak received his Ph.D. from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 2011 on the topic of statistical signal processing for functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) data. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rotman Research Institute in 2012-2013 and at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging in 2014-2015. Sungho joined the Korea Basic Science Institute in 2016 as a research scientist. Since 2017, he has served as a member of the editorial board of the Neurophotonics Journal.
Motivation: I am applying for a position on the Board of Directors of the Society for fNIRS (SfNIRS). fNIRS is a noninvasive and portable method for imaging brain function, and have unique applications in clinical areas such as studies of neurodevelopment and rehabilitation. In line with the aim of the SfNIRS, I would like to support the activities of the society, contribute to the exchange of idea, and disseminate fNIRS analysis techniques to the clinical/cognitive neuroscience community.
Alexander von Lühmann (NIRx, Berlin, Germany)
Biosketch: Alexander von Lühmann, Ph.D., is currently the director of the research and development division at NIRx. He is also visiting researcher at the Neurophotonics Center of Boston University and visiting researcher at the machine learning department of Technische Universität Berlin. Before joining NIRx, Alexander was Chief Technology Officer at Crely Healthcare Pte. Ltd, a Singapore-US-based MedTech startup and postdoctoral researcher at the Boston University Neurophotonics Center and Martinos Center, Harvard Medical School, in Boston, USA. He received his Ph.D. with distinction in 2018 from Berlin Institute of Technology and the M.Sc. and B.Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in 2014/11. Alexander is the founder of the opennirs.org platform, a contributor to the openfnirs.org project, and has worked and published in a broad range of fNIRS domains, including the design of wearable hybrid CW fNIRS instrumentation, neuroscientific experiments, data analysis, machine learning, and methods development.
Motivation: These are exciting times for fNIRS. The community has established fNIRS as a versatile tool that continues to push limits in neuroscience, diffuse optics instrumentation, and health sciences and increasingly towards clinical and consumer applications. fNIRS continues to evolve from an exotic method to the mainstream, from tabletop low-channel technology to wearable, high density, multimodal technology for whole-head measurements – across CW, FD, and TD fNIRS domains. Consequently, fNIRS has also become more interdisciplinary: Neuroscientists, diffuse optics physicists, physicians, engineers, psychologists, data scientists, and others are collaboratively moving the field forward at an increasing speed. My mission will be to help us use this great momentum to continue to grow the field and its impact on neuroscience, medicine, and neurotechnology applications across the world.