Women in MR Community

• Where are you located?
• What is your role in MR?
• How long have you been working in the field?

• What topic or challenge would you most like this community to explore?
• What would make this community valuable to you?

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Parshy Phillips
parshy@ismrm.org
United States
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Hi Women in MR, Thanks Parshy,

My name is Karin Shmueli and I am a Professor of MRI Physics at University College London, UK. My research focuses on MRI of structural and functional electromagnetic tissue properties, having been a pioneer of QSM and now advancing EPT.

 
My first ISMRM was Glasgow 2001 when I was training as a clinical scientist in the National Health Service, learning MRI from Donald McRobbie before completing my PhD with Roger Ordidge and then postdoctoral research at the NIH with Jeff Duyn.

 
I'm proud of having just chaired the highly successful 2026 In Vivo MR GRC with >50% female speakers and discussion leaders and would love to see the ISMRM achieve the same balance throughout.

Best wishes,

Karin

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Karin Shmueli Ph.D.
Professor of MRI Physics
University College London, UK
k.shmueli@ucl.ac.uk
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Hi,

Thanks for creating this space to connect! I am an Associate Professor of Radiology & Radiological Sciences and Biomedical Engineering at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN, USA. I joined the MR field when I started my postdoctoral fellowship in 2016, after completing my PhD in optical imaging and biomaterials. My research is focused on translating quantitative MRI to the spinal cord, with current projects applying diffusion and MT methods to study the lumbosacral spinal cord in multiple sclerosis. My first ISMRM conference was Hawaii in 2017. 

Kristin

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Kristin O'Grady, PhD
kristin.p.ogrady@vumc.org
United States
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Hi everyone! 

I'm a professor in the joint Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering department.  My research focuses on functional neuroimaging and is a combination of systems-level brain dynamics and multimodal studies in rodents.  My graduate work was with Stuart Berr at University of Virginia (he's a PET guy now), followed by a postdoc with Alan Koretsky at NIH.  My first ISMRM was in Philadelphia, way back in 1999.

I just got back from the GRC that Karin organized, which was fantastic!  To follow up on her comment about achieving better balance in ISMRM, there's still time to nominate people for next year's group of fellows and award winners.  This year's fellows are all awesome, but it would be really nice to see more diversity up on the stage next year.  The bottleneck for the lack of diversity is at the nominations level, so it's really important to think broadly and expand the candidate pool for the awards committee to consider.  I've got a couple of nominations underway and would be happy to help other people through the process if needed.

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Shella Keilholz
shella@gatech.edu
United States
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I'm Ashley Harris and I am an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary. My research focuses on spectroscopy and spectroscopy methods as well as applying spectroscopy and imaging to study the brain, specifically brain injury, aging and pain conditions. My first ISMRM was in Miami (though I missed Cape Town this year)

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Ashley Harris
ashley.harris2@ucalgary.ca
Canada
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Original Message:
Sent: 22 Jul, 2026 09:54 AM
From: Shella Keilholz
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

Hi everyone! 

I'm a professor in the joint Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering department.  My research focuses on functional neuroimaging and is a combination of systems-level brain dynamics and multimodal studies in rodents.  My graduate work was with Stuart Berr at University of Virginia (he's a PET guy now), followed by a postdoc with Alan Koretsky at NIH.  My first ISMRM was in Philadelphia, way back in 1999.

I just got back from the GRC that Karin organized, which was fantastic!  To follow up on her comment about achieving better balance in ISMRM, there's still time to nominate people for next year's group of fellows and award winners.  This year's fellows are all awesome, but it would be really nice to see more diversity up on the stage next year.  The bottleneck for the lack of diversity is at the nominations level, so it's really important to think broadly and expand the candidate pool for the awards committee to consider.  I've got a couple of nominations underway and would be happy to help other people through the process if needed.

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Shella Keilholz
shella@gatech.edu
United States
------------------------------

Hello, I am Teresa Lemainque, and I am a scientist working in the Department of Radiology at the University Hospital of Aachen, Germany. I started my MR journey in 2016 with a PhD on MR fingerprinting for quantitative breast imaging. Now my research is more application-oriented/interdisciplinary, with a focus on MSK, breast and liver. However, I still like quantitative MR (not limited to T1 and T2, though): ADC mapping, PDFF mapping, flow... My first ISMRM was 2016 in Paris.

I have a 1.5 year old daughter, and I see everywhere around me that combining family and work remains a big challenge, especially for women. Maybe there could be some kind of a format where "role model" scientists share their experiences with younger researchers, tell how they managed, which could be quite encouraging? Else, it is of course nice to have a community/"safe space" where everyone can ask questions. Also, opportunities like the junior fellow program could be advertised/emphasized to get high participation among female scientists.

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Teresa Lemainque
tlemainque@ukaachen.de
Germany
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Original Message:
Sent: 22 Jul, 2026 09:59 AM
From: Ashley Harris
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

I'm Ashley Harris and I am an Associate Professor at the University of Calgary. My research focuses on spectroscopy and spectroscopy methods as well as applying spectroscopy and imaging to study the brain, specifically brain injury, aging and pain conditions. My first ISMRM was in Miami (though I missed Cape Town this year)

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Ashley Harris
ashley.harris2@ucalgary.ca
Canada
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 22 Jul, 2026 09:54 AM
From: Shella Keilholz
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

Hi everyone! 

I'm a professor in the joint Emory/Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering department.  My research focuses on functional neuroimaging and is a combination of systems-level brain dynamics and multimodal studies in rodents.  My graduate work was with Stuart Berr at University of Virginia (he's a PET guy now), followed by a postdoc with Alan Koretsky at NIH.  My first ISMRM was in Philadelphia, way back in 1999.

I just got back from the GRC that Karin organized, which was fantastic!  To follow up on her comment about achieving better balance in ISMRM, there's still time to nominate people for next year's group of fellows and award winners.  This year's fellows are all awesome, but it would be really nice to see more diversity up on the stage next year.  The bottleneck for the lack of diversity is at the nominations level, so it's really important to think broadly and expand the candidate pool for the awards committee to consider.  I've got a couple of nominations underway and would be happy to help other people through the process if needed.

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Shella Keilholz
shella@gatech.edu
United States
------------------------------

Hi all, thanks for starting this community, and nice to meet you!

I am a postdoctoral researcher at King's College London, working with Prof. Shaihan Malik. I am an MRI physicist with experience in pulse sequence programming and developing open-source tools, and now focusing on low-field MRI. I am highly motivated to make MRI more accessible for research and patients alike. 

My first ISMRM was in London in 2022, one year before I graduated from my PhD, and I have not missed a single annual meeting since. I enjoy engaging with the community and find a good home in the open and reproducible research and low-field study groups. I am also the newly appointed post-doc rep for the British and Irish chapter. 

As a woman in science, I suffer from the instability of postdoctoral contracts and the difficulty of finding a position that would allow me to stay in one city (and country) for at least 5 years and start a family. I am very interested in hearing about your experience with these challenges and about funding opportunities that are great for women with such aspirations :) 

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Anaïs Artiges
anais.artiges@kcl.ac.uk
Research Associate in accessible MRI
King's College London, United Kingdom
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Hello Women in MRI and thank you, Parshy, for the initiative,

my name is Katharina Schregel, and I consider myself a clinician-scientist with a passion for MRI that shapes both my clinical work and my research. Clinically, I'm Senior Consultant and Deputy Section Head of Neuroradiology at Jena University Hospital. I'm trained in diagnostic and interventional neuroradiology with MRI being my favorite imaging modality by far. My research focuses on cerebral MR Elastography in animal models and humans with the overarching goal of developing imaging biomarkers that address diagnostic challenges encountered in everyday clinical practice. I completed my graduate research with Ralph Sinkus in Paris and later took a break from residency for a postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston under the joint supervision of Sam Patz and Charles Guttmann. My first ISMRM was 2010 in Stockholm and it remained my favorite scientific conference ever since.

Balancing clinical responsibilities, research, career development, and family life is an ongoing challenge that I am sure many of us share. I hope this community will become a place to connect with like-minded colleagues, exchange experiences, support one another, and have open and honest conversations.

Best wishes,

Katharina

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Katharina Schregel
katharina.schregel@gmail.com
Germany
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Hi Everyone!

Thank you for making this space! My name is Tyler Morgan, and I am a staff scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). My research focuses on functional MRI methods development and neuroscience studies examining feedforward and feedback signals in the human brain (Layer fMRI). I started working with MRI in 2011, and my first ISMRM meeting was Paris in 2018 while completing my PhD in Glasgow, UK. I moved to NIH in 2020 where I completed a postdoc and became a staff scientist in 2023.

As a LGBTQ+ woman in science, I have witnessed dramatic changes over the last few years in how institutions support women as individuals, both on paper and practically. I am very interested in hearing others' experiences finding institutional and community support in family planning, bureaucracy, and career development. 

Thanks again!
Tyler

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Tyler Morgan
tyler.morgan@nih.gov
United States
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Parshy Phillips
parshy@ismrm.org
United States
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Maryam Seif
maryam.sf@gmail.com
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Hi all, 

Just to get a discussion started, I wanted to share some thoughts about Maryam's questions. One of the things I like about ISMRM is that, for as long as I can remember, there have been women in leadership positions - chairing sessions, lecturing, leading study group committees, giving plenary and named lectures, and providing role models which I didn't always have at my home institutions. Currently, we have a female president, a female vice-president and a female president-elect. Given that the presidents are elected in membership-wide elections, it shows the wide enthousiasm for female leadership in the community. It's also true that in other places at ISMRM the gender balance is less equal. I'm not sure about the contributing factors (though would love to hear your thoughts on this!), but there are ways for the entire community to make this more equitable in future. 

Years ago I was at a Gordon Research Conference which had a discussion on EDI and someone pointed out that we (as trainees) could do more than complain about inequality - we could promote female leadership 'upwards' as well as 'downwards'. This was part of a longer discussion about female first/senior authorships, but the remark stuck with me, and applies here too. The easiest thing anyone can do to contribute is to simply vote. Another option open to all is to nominate people, whether it's the next trainee rep on your favourite study group, or a future board member. On the other side, I've also spoken with women who disagree actively with this idea: "we are already underrepresented and they expect us to run the extra mile now?", so I'm quite curious what you in here think: should we, as female ISMRM members, promote female nominees and awardees, or is this up to someone else? 

Wietske

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Wietske van der Zwaag
w.vanderzwaag@spinozacentre.nl
Netherlands
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 28 Jul, 2026 09:02 AM
From: Maryam Seif
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

Hi everyone! 👋 I'm Maryam Seif, a translational neuroscientist currently based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

I develop biomarkers sensitive to structural and functional changes in the brain and spinal cord (yes, the spinal cord deserves more love 😄). I've been in MR for more than 15 years and still enjoy learning something new every day.

I'm passionate about mentoring and currently mentor junior researchers through ISMRM and other platforms. I've also completed leadership training and am always keen to learn and get to know more brilliant people in the MR community.

I'd love this community to talk about career progression and why, despite so many women entering MR, we're still underrepresented in senior and leadership positions. We also noticed that this year's ISMRM meeting in Cape Town highlighted the issue, particularly regarding some of the major awards. It made me wonder what factors contribute to these patterns and how we, as a community, can help create a more equitable future. I'd love this community to be a space for networking, mentoring, collaborations, and sharing the occasional MR success (or scanner) story!

 

Looking forward to meeting you all! 😊

Cheers 

Maryam 

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Maryam Seif
maryam.sf@gmail.com
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Hi Wietske,

Thank you for your response. I completely agree that we need to nominate and support more women.

However, I think you may have misunderstood the point I was trying to make. My comment was not about ISMRM specifically, nor was it about whether women hold visible roles such as moderators, study group leaders, or even the presidency. My comment was about structural barriers in academia for women in science, not a criticism of ISMRM or its current leadership.

While we rightly celebrate the women who reach senior leadership positions, we often overlook the large number of talented women who never get there. Many remain in mid-career positions for years, encounter invisible barriers to promotion, and some eventually leave academia altogether.  This is also supported by statistics. Let's talk about the elephant in the room: in my experience, this issue is pronounced, sometimes even more for non-European women. Sometimes, despite excellent scientific records and contributions, some struggle to access the same opportunities, networks, and recognition as their peers. Their stories are rarely visible because, by the time they leave academia, they are no longer part of the conversation. 

This was the point I was trying to highlight. I had hoped that a community dedicated to supporting women in MRI would also be interested in discussing these systemic challenges.

Maryam

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Maryam Seif
maryam.sf@gmail.com
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Original Message:
Sent: 05 Aug, 2026 01:22 AM
From: Wietske van der Zwaag
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

Hi all, 

Just to get a discussion started, I wanted to share some thoughts about Maryam's questions. One of the things I like about ISMRM is that, for as long as I can remember, there have been women in leadership positions - chairing sessions, lecturing, leading study group committees, giving plenary and named lectures, and providing role models which I didn't always have at my home institutions. Currently, we have a female president, a female vice-president and a female president-elect. Given that the presidents are elected in membership-wide elections, it shows the wide enthousiasm for female leadership in the community. It's also true that in other places at ISMRM the gender balance is less equal. I'm not sure about the contributing factors (though would love to hear your thoughts on this!), but there are ways for the entire community to make this more equitable in future. 

Years ago I was at a Gordon Research Conference which had a discussion on EDI and someone pointed out that we (as trainees) could do more than complain about inequality - we could promote female leadership 'upwards' as well as 'downwards'. This was part of a longer discussion about female first/senior authorships, but the remark stuck with me, and applies here too. The easiest thing anyone can do to contribute is to simply vote. Another option open to all is to nominate people, whether it's the next trainee rep on your favourite study group, or a future board member. On the other side, I've also spoken with women who disagree actively with this idea: "we are already underrepresented and they expect us to run the extra mile now?", so I'm quite curious what you in here think: should we, as female ISMRM members, promote female nominees and awardees, or is this up to someone else? 

Wietske

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Wietske van der Zwaag
w.vanderzwaag@spinozacentre.nl
Netherlands
------------------------------


Original Message:
Sent: 28 Jul, 2026 09:02 AM
From: Maryam Seif
Subject: Welcome to the Women in MR Community!

Hi everyone! 👋 I'm Maryam Seif, a translational neuroscientist currently based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

I develop biomarkers sensitive to structural and functional changes in the brain and spinal cord (yes, the spinal cord deserves more love 😄). I've been in MR for more than 15 years and still enjoy learning something new every day.

I'm passionate about mentoring and currently mentor junior researchers through ISMRM and other platforms. I've also completed leadership training and am always keen to learn and get to know more brilliant people in the MR community.

I'd love this community to talk about career progression and why, despite so many women entering MR, we're still underrepresented in senior and leadership positions. We also noticed that this year's ISMRM meeting in Cape Town highlighted the issue, particularly regarding some of the major awards. It made me wonder what factors contribute to these patterns and how we, as a community, can help create a more equitable future. I'd love this community to be a space for networking, mentoring, collaborations, and sharing the occasional MR success (or scanner) story!

 

Looking forward to meeting you all! 😊

Cheers 

Maryam 

------------------------------
Maryam Seif
maryam.sf@gmail.com
------------------------------

Hi everyone!

My name is Aya and I'm a doctoral researcher at the University Hospital of Tübingen, Germany. My research focuses on developing AI-driven methods for motion-robust MRI, including workflow automation, motion estimation and correction, and real-time image reconstruction, mainly with applications in cardiac imaging.

I started working in MR during my master's in 2021, and my first ISMRM was in Toronto in 2023. Attending the meeting was incredibly inspiring. I was amazed by the breadth of the field and the opportunity to meet researchers whose work I had been reading for years. 

As an early-career researcher, I'd love for this community to be a place where trainees can connect with mentors, hear honest stories about different career paths, and celebrate the achievements of women in MR. Seeing women in leadership roles, receiving major awards, and sharing their experiences can make a real difference in helping trainees imagine their own future in the field. I think increasing the visibility of female scientists through mentorship and community will help inspire and support the next generation.

Looking forward to getting to know everyone!

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Aya Ghoul
aya.ghoul@med.uni-tuebingen.de
Germany
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Nastaren Abad
nastaren.abad@gehealthcare.com
United States
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Hi all!

I'm Nicole Seiberlich, and I currently have the great honor to be the Vice-President of the ISMRM 😅 💃!!  I'm also a PhD Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Michigan working on fast and quantitative MRI, and a mom of 4 big and little kids.  I would be more than happy to connect, and excited to listen to and learn from this group about how the ISMRM can help strengthen this community. 

Looking forward to working with all of you!

Nicole

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Nicole Seiberlich
nse@med.umich.edu
United States
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