The IEEE offers Institute Awards, and most Societies and Society Technical Committees also offer awards. Elevation to IEEE Fellow is a prestigious honor awarded each year to no more than 0.1% of the full IEEE membership by the Institute’s Board of Directors. Nominations are made from among Senior Members and nominees must be supported by references from at least three and no more than five Fellows in most cases. After applications are reviewed and ranked by the appropriate IEEE Society, the nominations are forwarded to the Institute’s Fellow Committee which then recommends a list of candidates to the IEEE Board of Directors for their consideration. The Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society is justifiably proud of its Fellows. We present here the Class of 2024 Fellows and wish them each our heartfelt congratulations.

Roger Lecomte

Roger Lecomte earned a B.Sc. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Université de Montréal. After postdoctoral training in nuclear medicine, he established the Positron Emission Tomography Research Laboratory (“LabPET”) with the goal of developing and exploiting PET technology for preclinical and human brain imaging. He is currently full professor of Nuclear Medicine and Radiobiology and served as the Scientific Head of the Sherbrooke Molecular Imaging Center from 2008-2023.

As a pioneer of preclinical PET molecular imaging, he introduced solid state photodetectors to reach the highest spatial resolution ever in PET (1995) and achieve several breakthroughs, propelling the LabPET team as the second most active in the world in preclinical PET (SNM Highlights 2001). This success triggered the development and commercialization of the LabPET™ scanners (2005), then considered the most technologically advanced PET systems. First marketed by the co-founded startup Advanced Molecular Imaging (AMI) Inc., the LabPET was deployed in more than 40 centers worldwide by GE Healthcare. Recent work has focused on merging radiation-based imaging modalities (PET/SPECT/CT) and developing the second-generation LabPET II™ scanners, achieving outstanding 0.7 mm resolution for mouse imaging (2016). Larger bore PET scanners have been derived with the fully modular LabPET II™ technology to achieve unprecedented resolution performance in medium-to-large size animals (2018-2020) and the human brain (2022). These devices are being commercialized by the new start-up Imaging Research and Technology (IR&T) Inc.

Dr. Lecomte has authored or co-authored 270 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 193 conference proceedings and 750 communications presented at national and international scientific conferences. He holds 20 patents on PET-related technologies, and he was invited to present 180 talks in research centers worldwide and at national and international conferences. Dr. Lecomte has received numerous recognitions and awards, including the recent 2022 IEEE Glenn F. Knoll Radiation Instrumentation Outstanding Achievement Award.

Citation: For contributions to avalanche photodiode use in scintillation detectors and to positron emission tomography

Roger Lecomte can be reached by E-mail at [email protected]