Vesna Sossi
Keynote speaker “PET is Wonderful” 2022

Professor Vesna Sossi received a Laurea degree in high energy Physics from the University of Trieste Italy and a PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of British Columbia in 1991. After completing her graduate degree, she went on to a post-doctoral fellowship in the UBC/TRIUMF PET group working on Medical Imaging. She is currently a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department and Adjunct Professor in Medicine at UBC and has been leading the UBC Positron Emission Tomography (PET) brain imaging program since 2009.

Professor Sossi’s expertise and research interests lie in using clinical and preclinical imaging to investigate neurodegeneration and other brain diseases through development of instrumentation, data quantification, image analysis, kinetic modelling, image reconstruction and novel imaging protocols. She is particularly interested to further develop and exploit hybrid PET/MR imaging to gain access to as yet poorly investigated aspects of brain function such as brain energetics and neurovascular coupling in the healthy brain and as affected by neurodegeneration and exercise, as well as other possible neuroprotective mechanisms. Some examples of her research are: the development of a complex dopamine turnover measurement using PET in humans and rodents and the demonstration of its relevance to Parkinson’s disease, first applications of texture and pattern analyses to PET imaging of several neurotransmitter systems, particularly well-suited to identify interactions between systems, and a recent development of an MRI compatible PET insert.

She has over 210 peer reviewed journal publications, and actively trains many graduate and undergraduate students. Professor Sossi sits on several national and international review committees and received several CFI, NSERC and Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research awards during her career.