Ferenc A. Jolesz M.D.
Dr. Jolesz has achieved international recognition as one of the great innovators and leaders in radiological research. Indeed, he continues to distinguish himself with ongoing, cutting edge research in magnetic resonance imaging and image-guided therapy.
Dr. Jolesz is a native of Budapest, Hungary, where he completed his medical training (including a Residency in Neurosurgery) before moving to the United States in 1979. Upon arrival in Boston, he served as a Research Fellow in Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and in Physiology at Harvard Medical School. By 1985, he had completed a Residency in Diagnostic Radiology and Fellowship in Neuroradiology at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
In 1998, Dr. Jolesz was appointed B. Leonard Holman Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Vice Chairman for Research at the Department of Radiology of Brigham and Women's Hospital in 2000; he has been Director of the Division of Magnetic Resonance Imaging since 1988. In 1993, Dr. Jolesz established the Image-Guided Therapy Program at the Brigham & Women's Hospital, which includes an internationally recognized intraoperative MRI facility, the Surgical Planning Laboratory, and the Therapeutic Ultrasound Laboratory-the center of groundbreaking therapeutic technology development. In 2002, Dr. Jolesz was appointed Director of the Neuroimaging Core of the Harvard Center for Neurodegeneration and Repair.
Dr. Jolesz maintains a research focus in basic and clinical neurosciences, magnetic resonance imaging, and image guided therapy. Along with a highly trained and dedicated research staff of over 100, Dr. Jolesz spearheads the development and implementation of innovative image processing methods and has brought several minimally invasive therapies into successful clinical application. Dr. Jolesz is also credited with developing, refining, and introducing into clinical practice the idea of direct, real time MR image-guided surgical interventions. In collaboration with key industrial partners, Dr. Jolesz has driven the development of various image-guided therapy delivery systems in current use in several sites around the world. Among these, interventional and intraoperative MRI, MRI-guided laser, cryoablation, and MRI-guided brachytherapy are the most significant.
Dr. Jolesz is further recognized for perfecting the use of high intensity focused ultrasound as a tissue ablation tool and integrating it with MR imaging guidance systems. Dr. Jolesz' pioneering research in image-guided brain surgery in particular has had an enormous impact on the fields of modern Radiology and Neurosurgery. Indeed, his contributions are widely acknowledged in the literature and in medical curricula throughout the world.
Dr. Jolesz' substantial research support comes from a variety of public and private sources, including several NIH research grants of which he is the Principal Investigator, corporate-sponsored clinical trials, and industry-supported research efforts. He belongs to several professional societies and serves on the editorial boards of prestigious peer reviewed journals. Commensurate with his prolific research, Dr. Jolesz has published over 300 articles in scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and has contributed many chapters and review articles in the fields of surgery, computer science, neurology, neurosurgery, and radiology.
In 1995, Dr. Jolesz was further distinguished by being elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the 2002 recipient of the Outstanding Researcher Award presented by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) and of the Gold Medal awarded by the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
E-mail: jolesz at bwh.harvard.edu