2026 ISMRM Annual Meeting
NAMED LECTURERS
Each year, ISMRM honors pioneers and visionaries whose work shapes the future of magnetic resonance. At our 2026 Annual Meeting in Cape Town, we are proud to announce the distinguished Named Lecturers who will bring powerful insights from across the globe.
These leaders in science, medicine, and innovation will deliver landmark lectures that highlight the very best of our global MR community. Be sure to join us in Cape Town to hear these inspiring voices shaping the future of MR.
Maruf Adewole, Ph.D.
Medical Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MAI Lab)
Lagos, Nigeria
Maruf Adewole is a medical physicist and the Executive Director at the Medical Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (MAI Lab) based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is also a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. His work focuses on advancing AI-driven medical imaging solutions for improved diagnosis in resource-constrained settings.
Through initiatives like NeurON, BraTS-Africa, ABreast, Haske, IMAGINE, SWIM, CONNExIN, and SPARK Academy, he promotes global health equity by advancing MR research, curating inclusive datasets, developing AI methods, building infrastructures, and developing local capacity.
His research bridges medical imaging, radiomics, oncology, and open science to improve diagnostic accessibility and healthcare outcomes across Africa and resource contained settings across the world.
Richard W. Bowtell, Ph.D., M.A.
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, England, UK
Richard Bowtell is professor of physics and Director of the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre at the University of Nottingham. After taking a degree in natural sciences in Cambridge, he joined Nottingham in 1984 as a Ph.D. student working under the supervision of Sir Peter Mansfield. He has been a faculty member of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astronomy since 1989 and served as Head of School from 2008 to 2014.
His research is focused on the development and application of new techniques and hardware for biomedical imaging. He is a Fellow of the ISMRM and of the UK’s Institute of Physics (IOP), a deputy editor of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and past-president of the European Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Biology. He was awarded the IOP’s James Joule Medal and Prize in 2020. The Cape Town meeting will be the 38th Annual Meeting of the ISMRM (or its precursor, the SMRM) that he is happy to have attended.
Kirsten Donald, MBChB, Ph.D.
University of Cape Town
Cape Town, South Africa
Kirsty Donald is a professor of paediatric neurology with an interest understanding the determinants of early brain health and development in resource-limited settings, such as South Africa. She has a faculty appointment leading the Division of Developmental Paediatrics in the Department of Paediatrics and Child Health at the Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital and serves as Deputy Director of the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town. She is a member of the disability policy team for the South African National Department of Health and Social Development and serves the on the UNICEF expert panel for global standard-setting in early childhood development.
Her research interests cover investigating psychosocial and environmental factors influencing brain health and development in early life, including nutrition, infectious exposures, prenatal substance exposures, and maternal mental health, as well as the genetic and phenotypic characterization of neurodevelopmental disorders in the African context. This research is focused on using multiple imaging methods, including structural, functional, and diffusion imaging from infancy to adolescence to facilitate a deeper understanding of the impact of timing of exposures on brain development.
As a member of the UNITY network, Dr. Donald has led a range of studies using low field MRI approaches across 6 different countries in Africa and South Asia to improve neuroimaging accessibility in LMICs. She also holds multiyear grants as PI from large funders including the NIH, BGMF, and Wellcome LEAP to support this work. She is the current chair of the Pediatric Association of Pediatric Neurology and Development of South Africa and president of the International Developmental Pediatrics Association.