Youngho Seo, PhD, is a Professor, Director of Nuclear Imaging Physics, and Program Director of the Master of Science in Biomedical Imaging (MSBI) graduate program in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Faculty at the Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute, Program Member of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, Faculty of the UC Berkeley - UCSF Bioengineering Graduate Program, and Physicist Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

He received his bachelor's degree in Physics from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) where he investigated radiation effects on electronics by cosmic ray as his senior thesis research project. He completed a master's degree in Physics at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, focusing on space plasma physics. He spent one year at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) as a medical physics student before moving to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) where he obtained his second master's degree and PhD in Physics with the dissertation on a dark matter experiment using dual-phase xenon under the supervision of Professor David B. Cline. He spent another year for postdoctoral training at the same institution in experimental neutrino physics. Dr. Seo joined the UCSF Physics Research Laboratory (PRL) in 2003, and was trained in medical imaging physics under the supervision of Professor Bruce H. Hasegawa before joining the faculty in 2006.

Dr. Seo leads a group of physicists and engineers working in the field of radionuclide and x-ray imaging instrumentation and physics, and directs the UCSF PRL. His primary research focus is to use quantitative SPECT/CT, PET/CT, and PET/MR molecular imaging tools for a broad range of research areas from small animal imaging using dedicated animal imaging systems and basic instrumentation development for physics analysis of clinical research data. Visit the UCSF PRL webpage to learn more about the current projects.

Dr. Seo also directs the preclinical PET/SPECT/CT/Optical imaging core facility at the UCSF Center for Molecular and Functional Imaging at China Basin.

Expertise:
Radionuclide and x-ray imaging physics and instrumentation

Specialty:
SPECT/CT, PET/CT, PET/MR, CT, small animal PET/SPECT/CT

Education and Training:
• Bachelor of Science: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Physics)
• Master of Science: The University of Alabama in Huntsville (Space Plasma Physics)
• Master of Science: University of California, Los Angeles (Physics)
• Doctor of Philosophy: University of California, Los Angeles (Astroparticle Physics)
• Postdoctoral Training: University of California, Los Angeles (Neutrino Physics) and University of California, San Francisco (Medical Imaging Physics)