René Botnar

• Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering

• Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging
• Signal processing
• Atherosclerosis
• Biological imaging
• Development of imaging probes

Director of the Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering and Full Professor at UC, Professor René Botnar holds a Master's degree in Physics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland. He has spent his research career at the University of Zurich, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard Medical School and Philips Medical Systems in Boston. He has taught at Harvard Medical School, the Technical University of Munich and King's College London, where he was also Head of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.

His research focuses on the development of new MR pulse sequences and image reconstruction methods for 3D free-breathing whole heart MRI, with a main focus on advanced motion correction techniques, new contrast mechanisms and quantitative tissue characterization. He also works on molecular MRI of atherosclerosis and myocardial infarction using specific contrast agents. His research is funded by a Regular Fondecyt, and he is a researcher at the Millennium Institute for Intelligent Health Engineering (iHealth) https://i-health.cl/, Fondequip Mayor "Low-field MRI" and co-director of the Basal Center "Interventional Medicine for Precision and Advanced Cellular Therapy (IMPACT) https://bit.ly/3mcCmkl.

A member of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR), in 2021 Professor Botnar was honored with the Hans Fischer Senior Fellow Award of the Institute for Advanced Studies,
TU Munich.