Secretary

Thekla Oechtering

I am a radiologist from Germany with over 10 years of experience in 4D Flow MRI. Currently, I am a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin. Given the opportunity, I would dedicate my energies in the study group towards bringing 4D Flow MRI into clinical routine. Where can 4D Flow make a difference for patients? We can only come closer to this ambitious goal if we foster interdisciplinary work between physicists, engineers, and physicians towards translating advanced imaging into clinical care. As founding chairperson of the Young Radiology Forum in the German Radiological Society (www.forum-junge-radiologie.de/de-DE/7023/welcome-english), I strongly believe in fostering a culture of diversity to bring together people from different disciplines, career levels, and sites to improve education, enrich discussion, and ultimately further our field.

Julio Garcia

My name is Julio Garcia, during the last 17 years I have specialized in medical instrumentation, experimental modelling, and heart diseases. I lead the 4D flow MRI program at University of Calgary, Canada. I have received >40 international awards including: Fellow of the Mexican National Researcher’s System, Junior Fellow of the ISMRM, and Senior IEEE member. I serve in several committees within IEEE and SCMR. I have >150 published works including original articles and conferences with >1300 citations. My aim as Secretary will be to promote diversity, trainee mentorship, and group-lead longitudinal studies.

Trainee

Leonardo Rivera

Hi everyone! My name is Leonardo. I am a scientist in the Department of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My research interests are to characterize neurovascular health using innovative MRI methods. Recently we have witnessed a large increase in the number of publications related to flow and motion encoded MRI. Such great news, driven by novel methods and applications, highlight a need for research reproducibility. As trainee representative, I will promote research reproducibility by helping establish a community team for development and supervision of an open-source library of methods and post-processing pipelines for flow and motion data analysis.

Liliana Ma

I am currently finishing my medical training in the MD/PhD program at Northwestern University. I completed my PhD under Dr. Michael Markl with a focus on the development of highly-accelerated flow imaging techniques (5D flow) for patients with atrial fibrillation. I previously served as Chair of the SMRA Early Career Committee, advocating for increased trainee outreach and organizing events to facilitate society cohesion and connections between early and experienced investigators. I hope to continue these goals as trainee representative, specifically helping young investigators take advantage of the wealth of experience and perspective that our study group members have to offer.

SMRT

Rachel Davids

My name is Rachel Davids and I have been an MR technologist for 15 years. Currently, I work for Siemens Healthineers as a Clinical Applications Scientist on the Cardiac R&D team. I am grateful to be nominated as the SMRT representative for the Flow and Motion Study Group. I hope to work with this group to bring up to date continuing education opportunities to SMRT members in addition to bringing a strong practical, clinical perspective to flow and motion topics.