Michael Van Dam

Dr. Van Dam received his Bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics from Queen’s University (Kingston, ON, Canada) and his Master's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto (Toronto, ON, Canada). He received his PhD in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA, USA) where he studied under the direction of Prof. Stephen R. Quake in the area of microfluidics. Afterwards, he completed a Postdoc position at Caltech under the direction of Prof. James R. Heath on microfluidics applied to the synthesis of radiopharmaceuticals, and transitioned to a Senior Scientist role at Siemens Molecular Imaging Biomarker Research (Culver City, CA, USA) to commercialize this work. He joined the UCLA Department of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology in 2007. He is currently a Professor in the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, Department of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology, Department of Bioengineering, and the Physics and Biology in Medicine Graduate Program, as well as a Vice Chair of the Department of Molecular & Medical Pharmacology and a Co-Associate Director of the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging. His research currently focuses on the development of novel, miniaturized technologies to perform multi-step radiosynthesis of radiopharmaceuticals (e.g. PET imaging tracers, theranostic agents), high-sensitivity radiochemical analysis, and instruments and methods for high-throughput radiochemical synthesis and analysis (with applications in synthesis optimization and novel radiopharmaceutical development). He has published over 70 papers and multiple book chapters, and has been granted over 20 patents, related to these discoveries. Dr. van Dam is also a co-founder of Sofie, Inc., which has commercialized a flexible radiosynthesizer technology and intuitive unit-operation-based programming approach developed in his laboratory (ELIXYS FLEX/CHEM and PURE/FORM).