10/19/2026
🎉 Meet four of our 2026 Academy Distinguished Investigators!
In the weeks leading up to RSNA, we’re celebrating all 55 honorees whose research is advancing radiology and biomedical imaging.
Today’s spotlight:
Ramon Barajas Jr MD | Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU)
Dr. Barajas Jr., a neuroradiologist and physician-scientist, develops and clinically translates advanced imaging biomarkers, emphasizing quantitative imaging genomics, neuroinflammation, and molecular radiotheranostics. He leads an NIH-funded clinical trial evaluating hypoxia-targeted FMISO PET/MRI biomarkers and their relationship to outcomes in glioblastoma. As an NCI Cancer Moonshot Scholar, he leads a translational lab developing biologically specific imaging technologies and nanomaterial delivery platforms for immunomodulatory therapies in brain tumors.
Marta Bianciardi, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Dr. Bianciardi pioneered ultra-high-field MRI methods that transformed in vivo investigation of the human brainstem. She developed the most comprehensive in vivo probabilistic MRI atlas of brainstem nuclei, disseminated through the open-source Brainstem Navigator toolkit, and advanced human brainstem connectomics with the first comprehensive maps of brainstem-cortical connectivity. She is now translating these advances into MRI biomarkers of prodromal Parkinson’s disease, disorders of consciousness, and sleep disorders.
Janine Bijsterbosch, PhD | WashU Medicine Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology
Dr. Bijsterbosch combines computational neuroimaging with large population datasets to identify brain markers of mental health. She established robust, reproducible neuroimaging correlates of depression across six datasets, linked distinct brain profiles to different symptom dimensions, and showed that individual differences in the shape and location of brain networks are sensitive to behavior.
Berkin Bilgic, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School
Dr. Bilgic develops MRI acquisition and reconstruction technologies that harness MR physics, self-supervised AI, open-source sequence development, and novel hardware capabilities. He developed the Wave-CAIPI trajectory, which fully exploits high-channel-count receivers for an order of magnitude faster clinical imaging.
Congratulations, Drs. Barajas Jr., Bianciardi, Bijsterbosch, and Bilgic! 👏
