Earning a doctorate and practicing veterinary medicine equipped Dr. Akers with knowledge in anatomy,physiology and diagnosis and treatment of animal diseases. He sought to further advance my research trainingby completing a biomedical engineering education emphasizing optical contrast agents and biomedical imaging.The complex interplay of signaling events in cancer biology is multidimensional, requiring a broad and flexiblecomprehension in approaching molecular imaging of cancer. Dr. Akers' career goal is to combine his educationand experience as veterinarian and biological imaging scientist to combat cancer and other diseases throughdeveloping novel preclinical and translational molecular imaging approaches and improving our ability todiagnose, stage and treat disease processes. His work at Washington University is achieving this goal throughdevelopment of new molecular imaging agents and detection strategies to illuminate biochemical and cellularevents in vivo using non-invasive or minimally invasive detection technologies. His experience with many animalmodels of cancer and expertise in optical and multimodal molecular imaging has opened opportunities forinnovative and collaborative biomedical research across disparate fields including tumor immunology, genetherapy and theranostic nanotechnology. Dr. Akers has therefore driven himself, through multiple collaborativestudies, becoming an expert in cancer biology, animal and human. As the Assistant Director of Optical ImagingShared Resource (OISR) and faculty member in the Optical Radiology Laboratory (ORL), he providesspecialized expertise to many research programs at Washington University School of Medicine. By enabling himto continue research without disruption from inevitable changes grant funding, the NIH Specialist Award willprovide continuity and autonomy to develop new imaging strategies to better accomplish the goals of fundedprojects and acquire preliminary data to support new research directions in cancer imaging and therapy,accelerating the Washington University School of Medicine cancer research enterprise.
My career goals combine my experience as veterinarian and biological engineer in developing novel preclinicaland translational molecular imaging approaches to diagnose; stage and treat cancer and other diseases. Mywork supports many research programs at Washington University School of Medicine; from my foundations inthe ORL and the OISR. The overarching goals of my work is to enhance detection of molecular events in livingsystems; enabling visualization of biology in its native environment; then translate this information to clinicalapplications in human medicine.
