(09/28/2023) Young Scientist Roundtable events are free and open to Anoka-Hennepin School District students, parents, and community members seeking to learn more about science. Three sessions are scheduled for this year with the first on Oct. 10. All the events are in the evening at the Educational Service Center (2727 N. Ferry St.) in Anoka. 

Event information:

• Tuesday, Oct. 10 from 7-8:40 p.m. 
• The topic: “MRI: A powerful tool to see inside your body”
• Part I of the event is from 7-8 p.m. and will explore how strong magnets are used to image the hydrogen atoms in our body. 
• Part II is from 8-8:40 p.m. and features Dr. Mehmet Akcakaya who will go into greater depth about how images are formed from MRI recordings and how these are being improved with deep learning methods.
• Registration is required to attend the event. Visit the registration website. 
• View a flyer for the event.

Roundtable Description: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become a ubiquitous part of our healthcare. MRI uses strong magnets to see what is happening in our organs without having to cut open our bodies. MRI tests produce detailed images of almost every internal structure in the human body – organs, bones, muscles, and blood vessels. In this talk, Dr. Akcakaya will discuss the importance of MRI, and the technologies that go into the generation of these images.

Featured physician: Dr. Mehmet Akcakaya is a Jim and Sara Anderson Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He received a bachelor's degree with great distinction from McGill University, Montreal, QC; and S.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. He was an instructor at Harvard Medical School prior to joining the University of Minnesota. His work on computational imaging and accelerated MRI has received several international recognitions.

Future events:

• Nov. 8 from 7-8:40 p.m. at the Educational Service Center 
  • Topic: The Dance Language of Honeybees
• Dec.12 from 7-8:40 p.m. at the Educational Service Center

Since 1992, Young Scientist Roundtable has brought over 250 scientists to thousands of Minnesota students on topics from the hydrogen atom to human joint replacement to food coloring.