IBS Neuroscience Imaging Research Center Director, Seong Gi Kim, Awarded ISMRM Gold Medal

• - First Asian recipient in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)… Medal presentation on May 6

IBS Neuroscience Imaging Research Center Director, Seong Gi Kim (Chair Professor of Biomedical Engineering), has been awarded the prestigious Gold Medal at the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), the world's leading academic conference in the MRI field. He is the first Asian scientist to receive this honor.

The ISMRM Gold Medal recognizes significant contributions to the field of magnetic resonance each year and is awarded to the top 2-4 researchers.

Professor Kim is one of the first scientists to apply functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques* to humans since 1992. After holding a professorship at the University of Pittsburgh under Professor Paul Lauterbur, a recipient of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the invention of MRI, Kim returned to Korea to contribute to the advancement of neuroscience. He joined IBS in 2013. At this year's annual meeting, his contributions to understanding the basic physiological basis of fMRI signals through human and animal studies were recognized.

*Functional magnetic resonance imaging measures changes in oxygen saturation due to brain activation.

Professor Kim's research focuses on elucidating the correlation between phenomena occurring in brain cells and the signals captured by MRI. His notable achievements include developing new MRI methods to measure brain blood flow and volume, clarifying the relationship between brain cell activity and changes in blood flow and volume, elucidating the correlation between fMRI signals, and understanding the causality of information processing between activated brain areas.

The Gold Medal was awarded to a total of three recipients: Professor Seong Gi Kim of Sungkyunkwan University, Professor Leon Axel of New York University (a medical scientist), and Professor Yi Wang of Cornell University (a physicist).

In the field of medical science, Professor Kaori Togashi of Kyoto University in Japan received the award in 2020, while in the field of MR science, Director Seong Gi Kim is the first Asian recipient. Among the past recipients of the ISMRM Gold Medal, Richard Ernst, a Nobel laureate in Chemistry in 1991, and Paul Lauterbur and Peter Mansfield, Nobel laureates in Physiology or Medicine in 2003, are notable.

Director Kim said, "IBS Neuroscience Imaging Research Center possesses the world's highest-quality high-field MRI facilities for both humans (7 Tesla) and animals (15.2 Tesla)." He added, "Establishing the IBS-Sungkyunkwan University N Center, the top MRI research facility, in Korea and receiving this award are significant achievements." He also stated, "It is even more honorable to achieve such results through basic research rather than through the development of new imaging technologies or clinical research in the field of MRI."

*Tesla (T): Unit of magnetic field strength, with 1 Tesla being approximately 20,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field.

ISMRM has 8,000 professional members from 58 countries, and its annual conference is the largest event attended by researchers, clinicians, government agencies, academia, and industry leaders. The award ceremony took place on May 6 in Singapore.

2024 Gold Medal Award Winners - ISMRM