ANAHEIM, CA - The Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) has announced its leadership slate for the 2019-2020 term, with Dr. Vasken Dilsizian taking over as president and Alan Packard, PhD, serving as president-elect.
Dilsizian is a professor of radiology and medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is chief of the division of nuclear medicine at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. One of his main goals is raising nuclear medicine's profile through outreach to patients, media, and referring physicians.
Dr. Vasken Dilsizian."The most fruitful areas of growth in nuclear medicine are those that have been neglected between the various established imaging disciplines," he said. "It is within these neglected boundaries that targeted radionuclide-based imaging offers the greatest opportunities for growth."
Taking over as president-elect is Alan Packard, PhD, an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. Packard is also the director of radiopharmaceutical research at Boston Children's Hospital and a research associate in nuclear medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Packard's goal in the coming year is to enhance the value of SNMMI membership, such as through continuing education, the society's annual conference, and the SNMMI Value Initiative.
Named as vice president-elect during the 2019 meeting was Dr. Richard Wahl, head of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and director of the university's Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. In addition to being an SNMMI member for many years, he also is the chair of research and discovery for the SNMMI Value Initiative.
In other news, SNMMI announced during the meeting that Mark Crosthwaite has been named president of the society's Technologist Section. Crosthwaite is the program director of the nuclear medicine technology program at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA.
The new president-elect of the Technologist Section for the 2019-2020 term is Tina Buehner, a health physicist specialist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. Buehner has 20 years of experience as a nuclear medicine technologist and previously was the director at large for the SNMMI Board of Directors.
