by
Sean Ruck, Contributing Editor | December 30, 2015
From the December 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Paul C. Aebersold Award
The Paul C. Aebersold award is named after a pioneer in the biologic and medical application of radioactive materials and the first director of the Atomic Energy Commission’s Division of Isotope Development. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in basic science applied to nuclear medicine and was first presented in 1973. The SNMMI Committee on Awards selects the recipient. Dr. David W. Townsend obtained his B.Sc in Physics from Bristol University and his Ph.D. in Particle Physics from the University of London and was a staff member for eight years at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland.
In 1980, Townsend joined the faculty of Geneva University Hospital as a physicist in the Department of Nuclear Medicine. He has worked on PET instrumentation development since the early eighties, and designed and built the first rotating partial ring PET scanner using BGO block detectors. In 1993, Dr. Townsend moved to the University of Pittsburgh as an associate professor of radiology and senior PET physicist. He was co-director of the Pittsburgh PET Facility from 1996-2002, and became professor of radiology in 2000.
In 1995, Townsend was principal investigator on the first proposal to design and build a combined PET/CT scanner. The PET/CT scanner, attributed to Townsend and Dr. Ronn Nutt, then president of CPS Innovations, was named by Time Magazine as the medical invention of the year 2000. In recognition of his work on PET/CT, Townsend received the 2004 Distinguished Clinical Scientist Award from the Academy of Molecular Imaging, and the 2008 Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award from the Austrian Society of Nuclear Medicine. In 2006, he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE and in 2009 received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Mediterranean, Marseille, France. He shared with Nutt the 2010 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology.
Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award
Each year, SNMMI presents the Georg Charles de Hevesy Nuclear Medicine Pioneer Award to an individual for outstanding contributions to the field of nuclear medicine. De Hevesy received the 1943 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work in determining the absorption, distribution, metabolism and elimination of radioactive compounds in the human body. His work led to the foundation of nuclear medicine as a tool for diagnosis and therapy, and he is considered to be one of the fathers of nuclear medicine. SNMMI has given the de Hevesy Award every year since 1960 to honor groundbreaking discoveries and inventions in the field of nuclear medicine.
