Faculty

Xiaohong Joe Zhou, Ph.D., is a tenured Professor of Radiology, Biomedical Engineering, and Neurosurgery at The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago. He serves as Director of Center for MR Research and Chief Medical Physicist for UI Health. Dr. Zhou received B.Sc. degree from Peking University in China and Ph.D. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Radiology, Duke University.

Dr. Zhou’s recent research has focused on diffusion imaging and its applications to studying tissue microstructures in cancer and other diseases. He is also active in developing novel MRI techniques to improve spatial and temporal resolutions for challenging biomedical applications. Dr. Zhou has serves as Principal Investigator on multiple NIH grants and holds 35 U.S. or international patents on numerous MRI technologies.

Dr. Zhou is a board-certified medical physicist by the American Board of Radiology, the American Board of Medical Physics, and the American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety . He is a Fellow of the Int’l Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), a Fellow of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM), and a recipient of Distinguished Investigator Award by the Academy for Radiology and Biomedical Imaging Research.

Contacts: [email protected]

Muge Karaman, Ph.D.

Muge is a research assistant professor at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research – 3T Program and in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her current research interests include developing and validating quantitative diffusion-weighted MRI techniques for the characterization of complex biological tissue in vivo, and integrating these techniques into computational models to address current and future medical challenges. She is particularly interested in investigating their feasibility in probing the

underlying tissue characteristics in different disease conditions and organs, including adult and pediatric brain tumors, gastric cancer, and breast cancer. These advanced MRI techniques aim to facilitate important clinical decisions in cancer diagnosis, early prediction of response to therapy, and monitoring disease recurrence, helping to develop optimized patient management strategies.

Contacts: [email protected]

Kezhou Wang, Ph.D.

Kezhou is a senior research specialist at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research – 3T Program and the Chief Engineering Officer at VasSol Inc. His current research interests include design and development of quantitative blood flow analysis software system based on phase contrast MR, blood flow simulation in the cerebral system, and medical image analysis. Dr. Wang is an expert on data analysis and visualization.

Contacts: [email protected]

Qingfei Luo, Ph.D.

Qingfei completed his Ph.D. study at the University of Chicago in 2010 and then moved to the Radiological Sciences Laboratory of Stanford University for postdoctoral training. He worked at Laureate Institute for Brain Research as a MR Physicist before he joined the Center in 2020. Qingfei’s main research areas are development and applications of fast functional MRI (fMRI) pulse sequences, MRI reconstruction algorithms, and simultaneous EEG and fMRI acquisition techniques. He also works on cardiac MRI with ultrahigh temporal resolutions.

Contacts: [email protected]

Kaibao Sun, Ph.D.

After completing his PhD at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2018, Kaibao joined the Center as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. Kaibao promoted as a Research Scientist in 2022. His main focus is in the MRI sequence development and its clinical applications.

Contacts: [email protected]

Alessandro Scotti, Ph.D. Postdoctoral Research Associate

After completing his PhD at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2021, Alessandro joined the Center as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. His main research focus is the development of high temporal resolution MRI techniques and their application on periodic biologic events. He also works on CEST MRI, MR Thermometry and fat/water imaging.

Contacts: [email protected]