
NATIONALITY
Spain
EDUCATION
- BSc, Particle Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 2001
- MSc, Particle Physics & Non-Linear Dynamics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 2003
- PhD, Physics, University of Santiago de Compostela, 2006
PROJECTS
Cristina Lois holds an undergraduate degree in Physics and a PhD in Particle Physics from the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain. The focus of her thesis was on detector development and instrumentation for the LHCb experiment at CERN.
After completing her PhD she was employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Molecular Imaging and Translational Research Program at the University Of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, USA, within Prof. David Townsend’s group. During that time, she worked on PET/CT imaging, being responsible for the evaluation of a prototype Time-of-Flight (TOF)-PET/CT scanner in collaboration with Siemens. Together, they demonstrated for first time in a large patient population how TOF improves PET image quality and diagnostic accuracy.
In 2008, she earned a postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the University of Santiago de Compostela in collaboration with the Nuclear Medicine Department. There she worked on PET quantification, PET & SPECT instrumentation, as well as teaching courses for undergraduate and Master’s students. In 2009, she was awarded a public grant to build a preclinical SPECT system based on a clinical gamma camera. In 2011 she spent a semester as visiting scientist at the Imaging Science Institute Tübingen, Germany, working on PET/CT and PET/MR imaging, including topics like analysis of the effect of MR contrast agents on PET quantification, protocol optimization or dose reduction, among others.