Moderator: Dr. Rasu Shrestha, MD. MBA
Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer, Executive Vice President,
Advocate Health, Charlotte, North Carolina, United States

Rasu B. Shrestha, MD, MBA, is Enterprise Executive Vice President & Chief Innovation and Commercialization Officer at Advocate Health, one of the largest non-profit and leading academic health systems in the United States. As a member of the executive leadership team, Dr. Shrestha is responsible for Advocate Health’s enterprise innovation portfolio, including strategic industry partnerships, and Advocate Health’s strategic investment fund. In addition, he spearheads a renewed focus on commercialization, launching new healthcare inventions, discoveries and ideas to benefit our patients and the communities Advocate Health serves, and beyond.

Dr. Shrestha has nearly 30 years of industry experience as a transformative physician leader experienced in delivering results across strategy, innovation, health information technology, marketing, communications, strategic investments and commercialization. Dr. Shrestha is a respected thought leader and visionary with a strong track record of growth and impact, and a strong champion of a culture of growth and transformation.

Panelist: Prof. Maija Radzina, M.D. Ph.D.
Associate Professor,
Pauls Stradiņš Clinical University Hospital, Riga, Latvia
European Society of Radiology, Executive Council member

Associated Professor Maija Radzina, MD, PhD, is a Chief of RSU Radiology Research laboratory and President of the Latvian Ultrasound Association (since 2011) and Past President of Latvian Radiology Association (2015-2023). She has served as a member of the EFSUMB Education and Professional Standards Committee since 2015 and is currently the Finance and Internal Affairs Committee chair (since 2023) at the European Society of Radiology (ESR) Executive council.

M. Radzina is a radiologist at the P. Stradins Clinical University Hospital, Diagnostic Radiology Institute in Riga, Latvia. She is recognized as a passionate educator in ultrasound and a diligent researcher with numerous publications. Her work has been devoted to innovative methods for thyroid, liver, urogenital, vascular imaging and musculoskeletal imaging (CEUS, Elastography, microvascular imaging). Her research is dedicated to innovative methods in imaging - including Artificial Intelligence. Currently she is the chief of educational programme about AI in Imaging at Riga Stradins university and has been actively involved in ESR AI Act working group.

Panelist: Prof. Reza Forghani, M.D. Ph.D.
Professor of Radiology & Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Vice Chair of AI, Director, Radiomics & Augmented Intelligence Laboratory (RAIL),
University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA

Dr. Reza Forghani is a neuro, head and neck radiologist and clinician scientist with medical AI expertise. He completed his MD and PhD degrees at McGill University, with a PhD in molecular and cell biology. After completing his Diagnostic Radiology Residency at McGill University in 2008, he completed a Diagnostic Neuroradiology Fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School. He is currently Professor of Radiology & Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Vice Chair of AI at the Department of Radiology, University of Florida College of Medicine where he is also the founder and director of the Radiomics & Augmented Intelligence Laboratory (RAIL) at the Norman Fixel Institute for Neurological Diseases. Dr. Forghani’s area of scientific interest is translational multi-modal AI, with the use of medical imaging for clinically impactful AI algorithm development. This includes specific interest in AI applications in head & neck and neuro imaging. Another core activity of the RAIL lab is to use clinical domain expertise to help translation and adoption of medical AI algorithms, working across different disciplines and with industry partners with the aim of developing clinically impactful AI tools that have the highest likelihood of adoption, so that they can be brought into clinical practice to impact every patient’s journey in the healthcare enterprise. Lastly, Dr. Forghani is also an expert in spectral imaging in the RAIL lab and is involved both in research projects and academic-industry collaboration in peer-to-peer education for adoption of spectral CT.