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Wolfgang Bogner receives renowned ERC Consolidator Grant

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(Vienna, 31 January 2023) Wolfgang Bogner, team leader at the High Field MR Center of the Medical University Vienna, is awarded the renowned ERC Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council. In his project, Wolfgang Bogner's team will develop a new magnetic resonance (MR)-based full-body imaging method that can map the metabolism of sugar throughout the entire human body.

ERC Consolidator Grants are awarded to outstanding researchers of any nationality and age with seven to twelve years of postdoctoral experience and a promising scientific track record. Wolfgang Bogner and his research team will receive funding of €2.5 million for a period of five years to carry out a highly ambitious biomedical research project.

In his "GLUCO-SCAN" project, Wolfgang Bogner's team will develop a new magnetic resonance (MR)-based full-body imaging method that can map the metabolism of sugar throughout the entire human body. However, unlike current clinically established methods, however, this method does not require radioactivity and promises to be much less complicated and even potentially cheaper in the future. "By developing this method, we will first demonstrate that it is possible to image the significantly increased sugar metabolism of tumors in order to better characterize and ultimately treat them; and, in contrast to currently available methods, do so completely non-invasively. However, our long-term expectations go far beyond these goals. We hope to establish a method that allows the imaging of countless metabolically active substances in the body in a whole range of neurological, psychiatric and metabolic diseases," says Wolfgang Bogner.

This is not the first major project granted to Wolfgang Bogner. Together with partners in the US, he is also leading an ambitious NIH RO1 project that will pioneer neuroscience at the world's only 10.5 Tesla full-body MRI in Minnesota, the highest field strength in the world at which humans can currently be studied. He is also co-leader of a doc.connect - a doctoral programme of the FWF (Austrian Science Fund) with the aim of facilitating joint research in the field of neuroscience between advanced technical colleges and universities (in this case 7 PhD students together with UAS Kärnten). To date, he has led nine Austrian Science Fund (FWF) / Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) projects that contributed significantly to the current state of knowledge in the fields of metabolic imaging, MR mammography, ultra-high field MRI and neuroimaging.

About the person
Wolfgang Bogner is a graduated physicist trained at the Vienna University of Technology and currently Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy and Team Leader at the High-field MR Center of the Medical University of Vienna. Although his scientific career took him to renowned research centers in Erlangen (Neurozentrum, University Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2006/2007) and Boston (Martinos Center, Harvard Medical School/MIT, 2014/2015), he ultimately returned to MedUni Vienna, where he is currently heading a team of 15 researchers.