Member Spotlight: Laura Bortolotti

I’ve been a member of ISMRM since 2018—time flies! My awareness about MR-related communities was absolutely zero when I started my career in MRI. It was then suggested to me to join the ISMRM at first, but I have to admit that I had no idea what being part of the ISMRM community truly meant until I attended the first annual meeting!

It was a long distance gut-brain connection: I followed my gut feeling and ended up working on a brain-related project! After my bachelor degree in physics, I started a master’s in particle physics at University of Bologna, but something was not right to me. So, I changed to the applied physics curriculum in my second year, which included medical imaging modules. Ionising radiation-based imaging methods caught my attention at first, but I was not 100% convinced. Then, MR imaging appeared in my class modules, and I thought it was just marvellous there are techniques that allow us to know how the human body works! When it was time to choose my project to graduate, Prof. Paola Fantazzini contacted the University of Nottingham; after one email, I was welcomed by Prof. Richard Bowtell in the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre to work on a pioneering project on brain motion correction using the new NMR field probes in the 7T scanner.

To work in MR means to work and to play with one of the four fundamental forces in nature to ultimately improve people’s health and quality of life; how empowering is that? Also, I am a genuinely curious person, so to investigate MR images feels like opening a Christmas present to me—will this feeling last till the end of my career? Who knows!

The magic of MR for me continues with the fact that metallic objects could levitate and fly in the scanner, but I am well aware of the danger of that and I am certainly not doing it! Nevertheless, my best part of showing MRI facilities during university open days is to demonstrate the effect of the eddy current induced by the static magnetic field of the 7T scanner on the aluminium plane and ask the visitors: “There is something that fights gravity. What is it?”

I am happy to not have a typical day, neither professionally nor personally; I’d be bored otherwise. Professionally, I am a Research Fellow at SPMIC now working in the research group led by Prof. Penny Gowland. The part of the project I’ve been appointed to aims to develop a MoCo technique for open geometry low field MRI scanners. I alternate days spent in the lab with days spent on analysing data and planning the next step to take to progress with the research project. I’d like to say that everything is always going nice and easy, but it is not, and that’s the fun part of doing research. This leads to occasional headaches, but not on a daily basis! My colleagues also are the ones who make my days. We are really supportive of each other, and I am glad to have them around during the day.

This year, I volunteered to be part of several committees, and this takes some after-hours working every now and then, but the feeling of actively contributing to the improvement of the community is a great payback for me. In the local scientific community, I am chairing the Postdoc Social Committee of the School of Physics at UoN. We ought to create inclusive monthly events where researchers working in very different fields in physics can meet. I am part of the committee organising the MR Educational Series of BIC-ISMRM aiming to provide free resources to the community across EU and Iran. Last, but not least, spoiler alert: I’m joining the Magnetic Moments organising team this year and really excited to see where we can take this competition!

My family is really cozy: it’s just me and my partner, and we recently celebrated the first year anniversary of our civil partnership. We have been adopted by the neighbour’s cat, who loves spending time in her (our) garden. In my spare time, I enjoy being involved in public engagement activities to promote science, but I love even more having time for doing sports—either outdoors or in the gym—and DIY projects; everything that makes my life colourful and adventurous is welcomed! One good thing that I’ve learned during lockdown, though, is to approach life mindfully, to slow down, and have some time out to recharge.

One thing that most people don’t know about me is that I started to roller skate when I was barely three years old, and that I’ve played synchronised roller skating with the Sincro Roller team for almost 15 years. We competed to be part of the Italian National Team each year, and so I attended national and international competitions. My last competition was the world championship in Novara in 2016, and it happened just two months before I moved to Nottingham, and eventually we won; it was the first time in the history of synchronised roller skating that Italy was at the top of the podium! I still get tearful when I think about that day. It was a really “long way to the top to rock and roll” (to quote AC/DC). To move from Italy to the UK and to be cut off from a sport that has given me so much was a big life change for me. I still miss my roller-family that has seen me grow—my team, my sisters, my coaches; they have all been part of my life for 26 years. But, all good things must come to an end to welcome new ones. I’m looking forward to hearing from other skaters from the ISMRM community; please show yourself!

What do I love the most about ISMRM/ISMRT? It might sound like a really lame answer, but I’d say the people who make the community is what I love the most.

ISMRM/ISMRT is a multiverse of MR techniques which are well-blended together giving a family feeling. I definitely felt lost in the k-space at the beginning, but it has grown on me since then, and the annual meeting has soon become the yearly appointment that I would like not to miss. I really appreciate that the society adapted their plans to allow members to meet through those disruptive years, and I still hope that the hybrid annual meeting format will be the new format for the annual meeting (it is not hybrid this year?!). I really enjoyed this year to be able to meet people in person, but also be able to join online sessions whenever I feel the need to zoom out for a bit.

The annual meeting is also the place where trainee members can meet and make their voices heard. Dr. Nikou Damestani’s, Dr. Jodi Watt’s, and my voice were definitively amplified during the secret sessions we organised in the past years—girl power! Also, to be involved in ISMRM chapters’ activities is a great way to advocate for the trainee community. I am glad to have been elected Student Observer of the BIC-ISMRM in 2021. By collaborating with Ana Fouto, Student Observer of the new Iberian Chapter of ISMRM at the time, we brought a wind of changes in terms of organising online meetings for postgraduate members. The answer we had from the community, both in terms of volunteering for organising and participating in the online meeting, was incredible. The event also ended with the comic duo formed by Prof. Rita Nunes and Prof. So Po-Wah: highly demanded in the following events along with the Gather.town conga and DJ Iberico!

To stress this one time further: people of the community, we are amazing.

I’ve been “in contact” with two out of 32 study groups; it would be really unfair for me to say which is my favourite out of 32! The Detection & Correction of Motion in MRI & MRS Study Group was finally able to organise an in-person event this year where I got to meet other researchers working on the main topic of my research. It was just amazing to be there scientifically and socially! The Reproducible Research Study Group has been incredibly supportive with me and my team on setting-up this year’s official ISMRM Challenge. I can certainly say that those are great groups to be in!

This year, I am chairing the organising committee of the official ISMRM Challenge: “Repeat It with Me: Reproducibility Team Challenge” (https://challenge.ismrm.org). Dr. Sophie Schauman, Dr. Maria Eugenia Caligiuri, and I are really committed to making the initiative successful. This is our personal challenge, and we hope the community will keep following it! A few teams have already signed up for it, and some researchers are looking for a match to participate in the challenge. Please visit the official forum to know more! If you have any questions, please send an email to: repeatitwithme@ismrm.org.