Dr. Shimron, Tech: Rapid MRI || Prof. Eisenberg, TAU: RNA Plasticity & Evolution

We will have two lectures (approx. 35-40 minutes each) in English. Light refreshments will be served before the first lecture.

Estimated schedule:
1830 refreshments at our conference hall (1st floor)
1900 First lecture
1950 Second lecture

First lecture:

Lecturer:
Efrat Shimron, Ph.D.
Faculty of Biomedical Engineering
Technion

Title:
Image Reconstruction Methods for Rapid MRI

Abstract:
A major drawback of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is its long acquisition time, which is about 40 minutes per patient. The acquisition time can be reduced by sampling less data using a sub-Nyquist rate; however, suitable methods are then required for reconstruction of accurate artifact-free images.
In this seminar, several novel methods for image reconstruction from sub-sampled data will be presented. These methods use a convex optimization technique known as Compressed Sensing and exploit data sparsity in the Wavelet Transform domain. The first two methods were developed for accelerating static MRI scans, which aim to capture anatomical structures. Experiments with data from in-vivo brain scans showed that these methods produce highly accurate images from only 10%-20% of the fully-sampled data. The third method was developed for accelerating temperature-monitoring MRI scans during High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) ablation treatments. Experiments with phantoms, an animal model and in-vivo clinical data show that this method significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods.

Bio:
Efrat Shimron has received several degrees from the Technion - Israel Institute of technology: B.A. in Physics (cum laude), B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering (cum laude), M.Sc. in Medical Sciences, and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering. Efrat is the recipient of over 15 awards and scholarships, including the Summa Cum Laude Merit Award of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM) and the Israel Society for Medical and Biomedical Engineering (ISMBE) award for excellence in Ph.D. research. Her research interests include the development of sparsity-based techniques for improving medical imaging, with expertise in MRI.

Second lecture:

Lecturer:
Prof. Eli Eisenberg
Raymond and Beverly Sackler School of Physics and Astronomy
Tel Aviv University

Title:
An alternate route to complexity: Trade-off between transcriptome plasticity and genome evolution in cephalopods

Abstract:
RNA editing is a post-transcriptional process that allows for diversification of proteomes beyond the genomic blueprint, a phenomenon called "recoding". However, it is infrequently used among animals for this purpose. I will review the state-of-the-art understanding of recoding by editing, and discuss at length recent results showing that recoding is particularly common in behaviorally sophisticated coleoid cephalopods (e.g. squid and octopus). In particular, the trade-off between genome evolution and transcriptome plasticity will be suggested as a partial explanation for the rarity of recoding in most animal species.

Bio:
Eli Eisenberg has obtained his PhD in theoretical physics from Bar-Ilan University, working. He then moved on to a Postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University and NEC Institute, Princeton, working with Prof. Boris Altshuler on mesoscopic electronic systems, following which he joined Compugen Ltd., Tel Aviv, where he worked as a senior scientist, specializing in computational biology and bioinformatics.
Since 2004 he is a faculty member of the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University. His research interests include statistical physics of the glass transition and crystallization processes, as well as computational biology. In particular, he has been active in computational analysis of RNA editing.