Month: July 2023

Why Do We Make Everyone Change into Scrubs for Their MRI?

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We get it; it can be annoying and time consuming to have a participant change out of their clothes into our scrubs when there is no apparent metal on their clothing, but looks can be deceiving. In honor of MRI Safety Week, I am sharing an article written in The Washington Post by Tobias Gilk that discusses the hidden MRI dangers in today’s clothing. 

Another reason we have everyone change their clothing (including clinical patients) is to maintain the cleanliness of the scanner and homogeneity of of the magnetic field, as well as reduce artifacts caused by items introduced into the bore. I can confidently say from experience, a dry cleaning tag staple creates a huge artifact and is incredibly difficult to locate.

If you ever have a question about MRI Safety, please email Elisa. Also, mrisafety.com, created by Dr. Frank Shellock, has a searchable list of everything from implants to hardware that is kept very up-to-date, and is a great resource for other safety questions as well.

Now Hiring: Director of the UConn Brain Imaging Research Center

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Director of the UConn Brain Imaging Research Center

The University of Connecticut (UConn) invites applications for a full-time Director of a state-of-the-art neuroimaging core facility currently in UConn's Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC). The facility is located in 3,200 square feet of recently renovated space and houses a Siemens Prisma 3-Tesla scanner and additional instrumentation for simultaneous and standalone high-density EEG, TMS, and tES.

The successful candidate will be enthusiastic to run a full-service core and motivated to maintain a high-quality fee-for-service facility at the cutting edge of research.

The University of Connecticut has dynamic, highly-regarded research programs in cognition and cognitive neuroscience, language, speech, and reading, developmental psychopathology, health psychology, kinesiology, genetics/genome sciences, and others, including the Institutes for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) and for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP).

This is a full-time, end-dated position with the possibility of renewal subject to performance and funding. The University offers a competitive salary, and outstanding benefits, including employee and dependent tuition reimbursement at UConn, and a highly desirable work environment. For additional information regarding benefits visit: https://hr.uconn.edu/benefits-beyond-pay/.

Please apply online at https://hr.uconn.edu/jobs, Staff Openings, Search #497648 to upload the following documents as a single PDF file: cover letter, curriculum vitae, research and scholarship statement, evidence of a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion statement, and contact information for three (3) professional references. Evaluation of applicants will begin on August 7, 2023. For more information regarding COR2E and BIRC, please visit our websites at core.uconn.edu and birc.uconn.edu.

For additional information, please see: https://hr.uconn.edu/jobs, Staff Openings, Search #497648 or contact: Andrew Moiseff, Search Chair, at Andrew.Moiseff@UConn.edu.

The University of Connecticut is an AA/EEO Employer.

Farewell to Dr. Roeland Hancock

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Associate Director of BIRC and Psychological Sciences faculty Roeland Hancock has accepted the position of Director of the new Imaging Center at Yale’s Wu Tsai Institute.

Roeland came to UConn in 2017 after completing his postdoctoral fellowship. His accomplishments are numerous. He started the IBRAiN program, created the TMS training protocol and offered training in TMS and EEG, and taught the only course on neuroimaging methods on campus. Roeland led a team of IBRAiN students to co-author a Nature paper. Numerous graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty benefited from his support, including 14 dissertations. During his tenure, BIRC has not only contributed to grow and strengthen our scientific community, but also contributed to increasing the revenue of BIRC by 10x (of which research-related expenditure grew by 5x also), becoming the first service center to “break even” at UConn despite the pandemic and shut down. Needless to say, it is a huge loss to our psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience communities.

Roeland’s last day was June 23rd.