Dr. Fukushima performed his first NMR experiment as a graduate student in the physics department of University of Washington in 1960 and has been in the field ever since. He performed solid state NMR in a chemistry group at Los Alamos for 18 years before coming to Albuquerque to do flow NMR/MRI at Lovelace Medical Foundation. The experiments the group performed included flow of granular matter as applied to handling fossil fuel (i.e., coal), lung imaging, quantifying urine collection in space, characterizing slurry flow, and looking for subsurface gasoline that had leaked out of storage tanks in Siberia. Currently, projects include microcoil NMR with nanoMR, development of compact MRI for small animal imaging, and development of portable single-sided NMR detector for characterizing ripeness of fruits on the vine.
Dr. Fukushima was the chair of AMPERE’s Division of Spatially Resolved NMR for four years and sponsored the semi-annual meeting in Albuquerque in ’97- the first time the meeting had ever left Europe. Dr. Fukushima is also on the editorial board of Journal of Magnetic Resonance, the premier journal in the NMR field. He has published over 100 papers. He authored a how-to NMR book in 1981 and it is still in publication. He also edited a collection of fundamental papers in biomedical NMR as well as co-editing several conference proceedings.
He now reviews many manuscripts and gives historical or tutorial lectures at meetings. He travels to Japan twice a year to visit collaborators as well as his son’s family and other relatives. In between, he tries to ride his bicycle to work every day. He recently took part in the 40th anniversary climb of Mt. Vinson in Antarctica, whose first ascent he did in 1966.
Mandy Clements is a recent graduate from New Mexico Tech, where she studied physics and astrophysics. Since beginning her college studies at Green River Community College in Washington state, she has participated in many interesting research projects ranging from the collection of exotic cosmic rays to the studies of low elevation air turbulence to her current work here in MR imaging. In her off time, she enjoys the outdoors, most notably competively racing sailboats at lakes around the Southwest.
Lana Chavez received her Bachelor's degree in chemistry from Northern Arizona University where she worked in Michael Eastman's lab. She received her PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in physical chemistry while working in the NMR laboratory of Alex Pines. She developed and performed Xenon-129 NMR spectroscopy and imaging experiments for the development of a biosensor and to study flow through porous media. She also developed numerical models for the biosensor system. Lana worked at Schlumberger-Doll Research as an intern where she developed a fast imaging technique. Lana taught chemistry at the School for Independent Learners (high school) and at Diablo Valley College. She joined ABQMR in January 2009.
Lana Chavez, Ph.D., Senior Scientist