Newswise — Mark A. Griswold, PhD, a professor in the Department of Radiology at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors 2017 Fellows Program, the highest professional distinction accorded to academic inventors.

He was elected as a fellow for having “demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.”

Griswold has earned an international reputation for pioneering research and innovations in the field of biomedical imaging. With creativity that stems from his expertise in electrical engineering, physics and computer science, Griswold also believes in collaborating with visionary research colleagues from multiple academic disciplines to drive forward novel solutions. Among his contributions, he co-led the team developing and refining magnetic resonance fingerprinting—a clinical diagnostic imaging tool that analyzes tissue changes for early indications of cancer, multiple sclerosis, heart disease, and other serious medical conditions.

The team’s published work on the MRI Fingerprinting technology in a March 2013 issue of Nature has been viewed more than 32,000 times; he has published more than 240 other articles in peer-reviewed journals. Griswold has also teamed with Case Western Reserve faculty members to create a robotically guided heart catheter, determine how MRI can advance discoveries in multiple sclerosis, and identify new ways of detecting early-stage cancers. He was centrally involved in helping the University improve campus computing to a 100-gigabit connection so researchers are able to transfer large volumes of data more easily.

Griswold came to Case Western Reserve in 2005 as an associate professor of radiology; in 2006 he was appointed director of MRI research. In 2012 he became a full professor at the School of Medicine. He has secondary appointments in the departments of Biomedical Engineering, Physics, and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Among many roles at the medical school and university, he is director of the Interactive Commons, a campus-wide institute that develops collaborative applications to communicate and visualize information in new ways, including Microsoft’s HoloLens. He has played a leading role on the team that applies the technology to support dramatically new ways of learning human anatomy via 3D holograms, that help students view and understand the body in ways not possible through traditional tools such as dissection labs.

Griswold earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign and a doctorate in physics at University of Wurzburg in Germany.

For his work in imaging, Griswold has earned numerous accolades, including the School of Medicine’s top honor: the Medal for Excellence in Health Science Innovation (2014). In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, an organization comprising the top two percent of medical and biological engineers. Additional awards include Fellow of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine; CWRU University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education Glennan Fellow; Outstanding Teacher Award, International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine; MRI Prize, International MRI Symposium; and the Wilhelm C. Röntgen Prize.

He will attend the National Academy of Inventors Fellow induction ceremony at the organization’s annual conference in Washington, DC next April.

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For more information about Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, visit: case.edu/medicine.