MICCAI 2020 Daily - Tuesday

3 Natasha Lepore 21 recognized for doing something that will make it to the clinic. Research is about trying to do something new. A lot of getting software to the clinic involves validation, making sure that it’s fool-proof, that it will work. There is a lot of work required to get to that objective, then it is a lot of work to learn how to commercialize it. Scientists don’t necessarily have that skill set. Moreover, we don’t have the time to build the infrastructure and to recruit the people who have the right skills. You also mentioned that researchers may leave and then no one continues the research. Could some young researchers look for these findings and continue to take them a step further? For someone interested, there are definitely ideas that can be picked up where they were left off. It’s a lot of work to then get them from an idea to the clinic. I don’t think it would be that easy. You have to be able to go out in the field and talk to people to know where the issues are. It’s really not always that obvious what the issues are. We got a grant a few years ago to go around the world to ask radiologists what their needs were. It’s the I-Core grant from the National Science Foundation. They funded us to go and ask potential customers what they need. Why did you pursue a path as a researcher rather than a physician? My undergraduate degree was in math and physics. My Master’s was in applied math, and my PhD was in theoretical physics. None of this had anything to do with medicine. I actually switched after my PhD. I decided I wanted to do something that had more immediate applications. I spent a lot of timesearching for the right field. I didn’t know very much about the medical field. And you do not regret the switch. No, not at all. I’m very happy that I did this. “The brain is much more complex in children than in adults” DAILY Tu e s d a y