Ruud van Heeswijk

Ruud B. van Heeswijk is a senior lecturer (maître d’enseignement et de recherche – PD-MER1) at the Department of Radiology of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV), in Switzerland. His research focuses on cardiovascular tissue characterization with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in collaboration with clinicians, biologists, and physicists.

Dr. van Heeswijk has been involved in a wide range of MR-related research: he started his MR journey with an internship on phosphor spectroscopy in Eindhoven, did stem cell imaging at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and contrast agent development in Eindhoven again. He then moved to Switzerland, where he worked on DNP hyperpolarization together with carbon-13 spectroscopy at the EPFL, before finding his true love in cardiovascular imaging at the CHUV. Here, he mainly focuses on preclinical and translational cardiovascular tissue characterization through techniques such as fluorine-19 MRI and parameter mapping, which led to several awards such as the prestigious Pfizer Research Prize. Meanwhile, he also secured extramural funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation as well as from several public and private foundations. These grants now support his own independent research group, which has a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary collaborations and daily interactions with medical professionals interested in MR.