Yicheng Ni
Gasthuisberg University Hospital, Belgium
- Orcid: 0000-0002-8553-7565
- Publications: N/A
- Citations: N/A
- Keywords: imaging navigated translational theragnostic research
Short Bio
- Short Biography (06-06-2022) Being raised in a family of medical professions, Dr. Yicheng Ni was graduated with a Medical Degree (MD) in 1983 and selected to be a staff member at the Department of Surgery, Nanjing Medical University, China. He obtained an MSc degree from the same institute in 1989 with a thesis on the mechanisms of Lipiodol transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) for the management of liver cancers, which is now a routine clinical practice. In 1990, he was invited as a free researcher by KU Leuven, Belgium, where he initiated an experimental radiology laboratory. He then received a PhD degree in 1995 with a doctoral thesis titled “Development and application of a methodology for preclinical evaluation of tissue specific MRI contrast media”. Given his outstanding achievements, in the same year he was assigned a tenured professorship followed by steady promotions till a full professor title in 2010 at the Faculty of Medicine, KU Leuven. Over the last decades, Dr. Ni has focused his scientific interests on the topics related to life-threatening disorders including cancer and cardiovascular diseases. With his expertise in clinical medicine, biomedical imaging, interventional therapies and contrast agents, he has established a series of experimental platforms for preclinical and translational research on diagnostics/therapeutics or theragnostics; developed a virtual biopsy method for noninvasive characterization of liver tumors using contrast enhanced MRI; discovered necrosis-avid contrast agents (NACAs); introduced an imaging method for noninvasive tissue stratification of acute myocardial ischemia; invented a dual targeting pan-anticancer theragnostic strategy OncoCiDia that has now entered early clinical trials in cancer patients; trained tens of postgraduate students including the first PhD worldwide on cancer radiofrequency ablation (RFA) that is now applied worldwide in clinical oncology; filed a dozen of patents or patent applications, some of which have been licensed out for further industrial development; published over 350 SCI journal papers and book chapters with over 10000 total citations and an H-index 54; edited/reviewed for many academic journals such as Radiology etc; worked as a guest professor in foreign universities and institutes; coordinated or participated in several EU or national or institutional projects; served as an evaluation expert for organizations such as European Commission (FP7 and Horizon 2020) and Chinese Academy of Sciences; and received dozens of academic honors including Herbert M Stauffer Award (1993) and Elliott Lasser Award (2009). He is listed as a top 2% scientist both careerly and annually as published by Stanford Univ.-Elsevier in 2021. Innovative, translational, cost-effective and longstanding research has ever been a pursuit in his academic career.
