Sónia Gonçalves, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow
Sónia I. Gonçalves graduated in Physics by Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade Técnica de Lisboa. She pursued her PhD degree in Biophysics in Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa and VU Medical Centre, Free University of Amsterdam, having obtained her (cum laude) degree in 2002.
From 2003 to 2008, she worked on using co-registered EEG-fMRI to study spontaneous brain activity, a rather pioneering work at the time (Gonçalves, S. I. et al. 2006. NeuroImage, 30(1), 203-213). For this she was distinguished in 2005 with one of the four Medalhas de Honra L’Óreal Portugal para as Mulheres na Ciência awards. From 2009 to 2011 she worked on the 3T MR unit in the Academic Medical Centre (AMC), University of Amsterdam, where she developed a variation of alternating-TR steady-state free precession sequences for abdominal imaging at 3T (Magn Res Med, 67(3), 595-600, 2012).
In 2010 she moved back to Portugal and went to Coimbra where she was invited assistant professor and research associate at the Medical Faculty, University of Coimbra. She has lectured on MR Physics, Radiological protection and has supervised several MSc theses. At the Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Life Sciences, she worked on the development of MR based techniques for clinical applications (Gurney-Champion et al., Inv Rad, 2016). She has been reviewer for several brain imaging and biomedical engineering journals such as NeuroImage, or IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering and also for organizations such as Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek Vlaanderen.
Research wise what makes her twinkle is to grab a (basic or clinical) problem, and devise the most simple and direct method to solve it! That may imply going to the basics of MR Physics and design a new MR pulse sequence or rather work at a biosignal processing level to retrieve the desired information. Ultimately, what makes her smile is to see the new methodology working in a clinical setting.
Besides science, she likes hiking, fitness and walking her dog on the beach.
Email: sonia.goncalves@research.fchampalimaud.org
