Personal Statement

José M. Benlloch (1962, Valencia, Spain) is Full Professor (Tenure Research Scientist) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He worked (1987-1990, 1996-1998) in particle detectors at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) and at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Chicago, USA, 1991-1995). His PhD thesis (1990) was on the first data taken by the DELPHI collaboration of the LEP accelerator at CERN, and determined indirectly the number of light neutrino generations and the top quark mass. Later, he was member of the CDF collaboration that discovered in 1995 the top quark, one of the 12 elementary particles that constitute matter. He worked as Staff member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1991-1995) under the direction of Jerome Friedman (Nobel Laureate in Physics, 1990). In 1996, he comes back to CERN in order to perform research on radiation detectors in the groups of F. Sauli and T. Ypsilantis. When he returned to Spain in 1999, he started a research group on Medical Imaging. Since then, he has developed several medical imaging diagnostic devices based on the detection of gamma rays, X-rays, magnetic resonance and ultrasound, that have been successfully transferred to industry.
 

 

MBA, Major in Finance and Business Economics, The University of Chicago (1998). Introduced several Nuclear Medicine & Therapies to Spain: PET cyclotrons, Proton Therapy, 177Lu therapy.
 

 

Coordinator of the FP6 EU MAMMI project (MAMmography with Molecular Imaging, 2007-2010). MAMMI developed a PET dedicated to the breast examination, with an unprecedented spatial resolution (1.5 mm), for the early diagnosis of cancer and therapy monitoring. Coordinator of the FP7 EU MINDView project (Multimodal Imaging of Neurological Disorders, 2011-2018), an innovative PET/MRI system dedicated to the brain examination in order to better understand the interplay between different neurotransmitter pathways and the activation of several areas in the brain, and ultimately to achieve a more precise and quantitative diagnosis of mental disorders. Coordinated the HISTO-MRI project (H2020 – Future Emerging Technologies Open), that developed an innovative MRI technology that will allow the visualization of individual human neurons in vivo and in real time. He has also received an ERC Advanced Grant (4D-PET project) to develop a new PET scanner that stores the 3D position and time of each gamma ray interaction along its path and an ERC Synergy Grant (SmartX project) to create the next generation of X-ray sensors.
 

 

Author of 349 articles in international peer reviewed publications, with an H index of 93 (Google Scholar). Advisor of 10 PhD theses. Author of 40 patents related to imaging equipment for medical diagnosis. Founder (2011) and director of the Institute for Instrumentation in Molecular Imaging (I3M), with over 20 years of experience in sensors and systems for medical imaging. He received from Felipe VI, King of Spain, the National Research Award "Leonardo Torres Quevedo" in 2014, and from Juan Carlos I, former King of Spain, the "Rey Jaime I" award in 2008.