Abass Alavi is Professor of Radiology and Neurology. He is currently the Director of Research Education in the Division of Nuclear Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

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In 2004, Alavi was awarded the Georg Charles von Hevesy Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine

Society of Nuclear Medicine

The Society of Nuclear Medicine, or SNM, based in Reston, Virginia, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1954. There are 17,000 members: physicians, pharmacists, physicists and scientists, except for a separate section of 10,000 technologists...

 for his pioneering work in the development of positron emission tomography

Positron emission tomography

Positron emission tomography is nuclear medicine imaging technique that produces a three-dimensional image or picture of functional processes in the body. The system detects pairs of gamma rays emitted indirectly by a positron-emitting radionuclide , which is introduced into the body on a...

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He is an internationally renowned expert in the modern imaging sciences and in the clinical applications of PET imaging for the detection of cancer

Cancer

Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 as well as neurological, cardiovascular, and infectious

Infection

An infection is the colonization of a host organism by parasite species. Infecting parasites seek to use the host's resources to reproduce, often resulting in disease...

disorders.

External links

• Biography