Radiology and biomedical engineering assistant professor wins Tracy Lynn Faber Award

SACRAMENTO – Emilie Roncali, an assistant professor with both the Department of Radiology and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis, has been awarded the 2022 Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) for her outstanding contributions to advancing women in the medical imaging sciences. Her research into measuring the level of absorbed radiation and identifying the appropriate personalized dose for each patient is key to effectively developing nuclear medicine therapy treatments that directly target tumors and spare normal healthy tissues.

Emilie Roncali

Roncali’s research involves molecular imaging and therapeutic treatments, with an emphasis on new technology for positron emission tomography (PET) and quantitative dosimetry for radionuclide therapy. She is currently focusing her research developments on personalized dosimetry for radiopharmaceutical therapy. She is a member of two focus groups for the National Cancer Institute (NCI), as well as an investigator of the Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) initiative to develop new dosimetry methods for targeted radionuclide therapy (TRT) with the goal of improving treatment planning and optimizing TRT clinical trials. Specifically, she is developing image-based and simulation-based dosimetry for yttrium-90 radioembolization for advanced liver cancer treatment.

Roncali is a dual appointed faculty member at UC Davis, an assistant professor with both the Department of Radiology and the Department of Biomedical Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the École Centrale de Paris, France before joining UC Davis for her postdoctoral training. Roncali has developed optical models for Monte Carlo simulation of PET detectors and applies these models to the optimization of fast and ultra-fast detectors. Her simulation tools are frequently released in opensource software broadly used the field of nuclear medicine technology development.

The Tracy Lynn Faber Memorial Award, which includes an honorarium and a plaque, is given each year to support advancement of women in medical imaging sciences by SNMMI’s Physics, Instrumentation and Data Sciences Council. The Award is given either to an individual (woman or man) who has significantly promoted advancement of women in medical imaging sciences, or to a woman in early- or mid-career who has made one or more significant contributions to medical imaging sciences.

Roncali will be honored during the SNMMI Annual Meeting in June, which will be held in Vancouver, BC this year.