Dr. Yan Liu recently joined EORTC Headquarters as a fellow in the Translational Research, Radiotherapy and Imaging Department

Dr. Yan Liu completed her medical studies at the Shanghai Jiaotong University College of Medicine in Shanghai, China, where she also received her Master of Medicine in Image Diagnosis. Following her medical studies she spent two years as a resident radiologist in the imaging diagnosis center at the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center.

In September 2007 Yan was awarded a scholarship to study neonatal brain structure by diffusion tensor imaging and tractography in the Neuroradiology Department at the Erasmus Hospital in Brussels, where she also served as a visiting physician. Yan reports that she had the opportunity to become familiar with brain tumors at Erasmus Hospital as “we worked with a neuro-oncology team which involved neuro-surgeons, oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, physicians for PET, and psychologists”.

She will defend her Ph.D. thesis, “In-vivo evaluation of brain structure in preterm neonates at term-equivalent time: Contribution of diffusion tensor imaging and probabilistic tractography”, in January 2012.

At EORTC Headquarters, Dr. Liu will be involved in a wide range of imaging activities. Initially these will involve her participation in the QuIC-ConCePT and Euro‐BioImaging projects. QuIC-ConCePT (Quantitative Imaging in Cancer: Connecting Cellular Processes with Therapy), through a grant provided by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, aims to qualify imaging biomarkers of tumor cell proliferation, apoptosis, and necrosis that will allow drug developers to reliably demonstrate the modulation of these pathologic processes in tumors in patients in cancer clinical trials. Euro‐BioImaging is a pan‐European research infrastructure project focusing on biological and biomedical imaging.

We at the EORTC Headquarters are pleased to have Yan on board.

John Bean