Team members (UMIL)

Antonio J. Gonzalez, PhD, Group leader

Research Staff at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), at the Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging. PhD in Physics by the University of Heidelberg (Germany), worked carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. He started the research on molecular imaging instrumentation in 2006. He obtained a Ramon y Cajal grant in 2015, and a permanent position at CSIC in 2017. Scientifically coordinated the EU projects MAMMI (FP6) and MINDView (FP7). He recently obtained an NIH R01 award as co-PI. He is leading the Detectors for Molecular Imaging Lab (DMIL).

email: dmil[at]i3m.upv.es

Filomeno Sanchez, PhD, Senior

Dr. Filomeno Sánchez Martínez received his PhD in Physics at the University of Valencia in 1989. He has a permanent position as Research Scientist of the Spanish Council for Scientific Research. Since 2000 is a member of the Physics Medicine Group at the i3M. Recently, he participated in the EU project MINDVIEW. He was the coordinator of the Cardio-PET project, a specific PET system for studying human heart under stress conditions, ended in December 2020. Currently he coordinates the DEEP-BREAST Project, for the development of a continuous edgeless crystal PET system for breast cáncer.

Andrea Gonzalez-Montoro, PhD. Post-doc researcher

PhD in Physics from Universitat de València in 2018 and BSc in Physics (2010-2014) from Universitat de València. Her PhD studies are on the design and implementation of high efficiency PET detector blocks based on monolithic crystals, she defended her thesis on December 2018 with Cum Laude and International Recognition. She was granted with one “Contrato de Garantia Juvenil del CSIC”. In 2020, she was awarded with the “2020 IEEE/NPSS Ronald J. Jaszczak Graduate Award” that recognizes the excellence of young researchers and she was also granted with one APOSTD to continue her postdoctoral studies in collaboration with the i3M and the group at Stanford University.

David Sánchez, PhD, PostDoc

David Sanchez received his Degree in Physics from Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in 2014. At this time, he started working in the instrumentation service (SiUB) from the Physics Faculty at Universitat of Barcelona as a Research Associate. In the meantime he obtained his M.S. degree in Photonics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) in 2015. In 2016 started his Industrial PhD on Medical Image in collaboration with Hamamatsu and obtained the PhD in 2021. During this time, he was focused on the optimization of monolithic PET modules using SiPM and the ASIC HRFlexToT along with many other fast timing applications.

Marta Freire, PhD. Candidate

BSc in Physics and BSc in Materials Engineering at the Universidad de Sevilla. MSc in Medical Physics at the Universitat de València. PhD candidate at i3M since 2019, funded by a grant of the Generalitat Valenciana. Her area of research is the implementation of new algorithms including machine learning techniques among others, for an accurate gamma-ray impact determination in scintillation monolithic blocks for PET applications.

Alejandro Lucero, PhD student

Bsc in Biomedical Engineering specialized in Medical Imaging at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). Msc with Distinction in Medical Imaging from School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen (UOA). PhD candidate in Technologies for Health and Wellbeing at the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV). His area of research is data analysis, image reconstruction and Monte Carlo simulations.

Neus Cucarella, Garantía Juvenil Contract

BSc in Physics and MSc in Medical Physics at the Universitat de València. She was granted with a “Garantía Juvenil” contract in 2018 in the DMIL group, where she has been working in PET instrumentation based on Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs), including time of flight (TOF) and Compton information.

Koldo Vidal, Senior R&D Engineer

Higher Industrial Engineer (1992) from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. In 2006 he joined the IFIC Medical Physics Group in the Mechanical Technical Support tasks. Since 2011, with the creation of the Institute for Instrumentation and Molecular Imaging (I3M), he has developed my Mechanical Technical Support functions at the Institute mainly in the Detectors for Molecular Imaging Laboratory.

Santiago Jiménez Serrano, R&D Engineer

Computer Science Engineer (2011), Master Degree in Biomedical Engineering (2013) and Master Degree in Artificial Intelligence (2018) from the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Since 2017 he worked in the industry as software developer mostly in the PET image reconstruction field plus callibration, configuration and GUI systems for commercial PET devices. In 2021 he joined the Institute for Instrumentation and Molecular Imaging (I3M) developing software solutions mainly for data processing and image reconstruction related with the Detectors for Molecular Imaging Laboratory projects.

Riccardo Latella, R&D Engineer at Multiwave Metacrystal S.A and PhD. Candidate

BSc and MSc in Electronics Engineer at the Polytechnic of Milan (Italy). After an internship as an Analog Designer in Infineon Technologies where he designed a multi-chip low-side laser driver in a System On Package for LiDAR Applications, he continued to work for one year in the same company as a Test Engineer. His current position focuses on research, design and development of ultimate timing testing setups and metascintillator read-out systems in a joint role as R&D Engineer at Multiwave Metacrystal and Ph.D. student at I3M.

Celia Valladares de Francisco, PhD. Candidate

BSc in Industrial Technologies Engineering specialized in Electronics at Universidad de Sevilla, MSc Industrial Engineering specialized in Product Development at the UPV. PhD candidate in Technologies for Health and Wellbeing at the UPV. At i3M since 2020, her area of research is the development of new PET instrumentation with time of flight (TOF) capabilities based on pixelated crystals and Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs). Celia has just started his PhD work at the DMIL team.

Gabriel Cañizares, PhD. Candidate

He studied Physics degree at Universidad de Valencia, and the Master of Medical Physics. PhD student with a CSIC FPI grant. He collaborates in the area of Simulation, data processing and Image Reconstruction. PhD candidate in Technologies for Health and Wellbeing at the UPV.

Francis Loignon-Houle, PostDoc

Francis received his BSc in Physics, then his MSc and PhD in Radiation Sciences and Biomedical Imaging at University of Sherbrooke in Canada. He joined the DMIL group in 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher with postdoctoral grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Fonds de recherche du Québec – Nature et technologies (FRQNT). He is working on novel approaches to improve the time resolution of scintillation detectors for time-of-flight PET imaging.

Georgios Konstantinou, PhD. CTO, Multiwave Metacrystal S.A and post-doctoral researcher I3M.

Georgios is an electric and computer engineering graduate from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). After an internship and research engineer placement at CERN (Geneva, 2009-2013), he acquired his PhD from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (2014-2017), through an Early Stage Researcher Marie Sklodowska Curie fellowship. He has professional experience of intellectual property (European Patent Organization, 2017-2018) and start-up enterpreneurship (SensYnc, Multiwave Metacrystal, 2019-today). He currently holds a joint role as the technical executive of Multiwave and a post-doctoral researcher at the I3M.