1 February 2024 | High season for EPFL’s Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM)! In spring and summer 2023, Dimitri Van De Ville, Head of Section at CIBM, welcomed not just one but two colleagues from other EuroTech Universities in the frame of the EuroTech Visiting Researcher Programme. Irena Zivkovic of TU/e and Vitaliy Zhurbenko of DTU have collaborated for a number of years and decided to both spend some time at EPFL to establish connections with the CBIM team. All three researchers work in the field of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. We spoke with Professor Zivkovic about her stay in Switzerland.
Irena, you work on MRI antennas that improve the scanned image. Why did you decide to go to the CIBM for two weeks?
The CIBM has a reputation in high performance MRI research that goes back many years. I was familiar with the activities at CIBM even during my PhD period at University of Bern. Now, when the opportunity arrived, there were not many doubts which institute to visit first.
What were you able to achieve during your visit?
For me personally, this visit was super productive. I work in a field of MRI hardware development and just before I visited CIBM I had some new ideas which I proposed to colleagues at CIBM to test during my stay in Lausanne. In general, I work very fast, and it nicely complemented colleagues at CIBM and their working style. At the end we submitted two conference abstracts (which were accepted) and one journal paper which is at the last stage in reviewing process, we expect it will be published soon. We are drafting one more journal paper which should be submitted soon.
Your visit took place almost a year ago. Is the collaboration with Professor Van de Ville and his team still on-going?
Yes, the connection with the team of Prof. Van de Ville is continuous since my visit. We continue to discuss ideas and develop new projects.
What did you appreciate most about the Programme?
In my view, the goal of the programme to connect researchers within EuroTech Alliance universities is fulfilled in the current form of the programme. It is nice to support the stay of researchers at another lab or institute since it provides better insight how the research is going in another place and what are possibilities for common work and collaboration.
Thank you very much!
Irena Zivkovic’s profile
Read more about her visit at EPFL here.
Irena Zivkovic works as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands. She obtained her PhD at the Institute of Applied Physics, University of Bern, Switzerland in 2012. Prior to that, she was a research fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech, Pasadena, USA). The topic of her research was applied electromagnetics – in astronomy (until and including her PhD) and in MRI (after obtaining her PhD). She was a Max Planck fellow from 2013-2017 at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen, Germany, where she worked on 9.4T human MRI scanner. From 2017-2019 she held a postdoctoral position in the Radiology department at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC) the Netherlands, where she worked mostly at 7T MRI but also at ultra-low field (50mT) and at clinical scanners (1.5T and 3T). In 2019, she was appointed as assistant professor at TU/e, where she is the founder and PI of the MRI hardware development research line.
The EuroTech Visiting Researcher Programme funds research stays of up to four weeks and is open to professors and postdocs working at one of our universities and interested in visiting another EuroTech University.
The 2024 call for applications is open until 12 February 2024.
