Sim4Life Student Competition 2025 Awardees
1st Prize:
Elizaveta Shegurova, EPFL, Switzerland, is awarded USD 3,000 for her work
entitled
Wearable, Twisted-Pair Coil Arrays for Multi-Modal MRI
As part of her Master’s thesis, Elizaveta successfully evaluated the theoretical performance of an integrated 32-channel electroencephalography (EEG) cap combined with a wearable 10-channel receive and 8-channel transmit/receive dipole array. The project combined high-quality in silico modeling with experimental validation to address complex parallel receive coil systems, full EEG electrode and cabling configurations, and comprehensive electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure assessment. Fundamental modeling practices such as convergence analysis and precise tuning and matching of transmit and receive coils were successfully carried out. Through this work, Elizaveta demonstrated exceptional work with Sim4Life to investigate advanced wearable coil technologies for simultaneous EEG and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies at 7 Tesla.
2nd Prize:
Paul S. Jacobs, University of Pennsylvania, USA, is awarded USD 2,000
for his work entitled
Reduction of Radiofrequency Induced Implant Heating via Flexible Metasurface
Shielding at 7 T
In this work, Paul and his collaborators used Sim4Life to design and investigate the shielding performance of flexible metasurfaces acting as electric-field shields to enhance implant safety during MRI examinations. They conducted comprehensive numerical simulations with phantom and human body models to quantify differences in dosimetric exposure metrics in the vicinity of the implant. The study further evaluated temperature increases with and without metasurfaces, as well as a control material, and assessed imaging performance by comparing results with experimental validation.
3rd Prize:
Robin Wydaeghe, Ghent University, Belgium, is awarded USD 1,000
for his work entitled
GOLIAT: Comprehensive Automated Near- and Far-Field SAR Assessments
Using Sim4Life
Robin developed a sophisticated Python framework, GOLIAT, that fully automates EMF dosimetry simulations and the extraction of key exposure metrics such as the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). The framework enables end-to-end simulation workflows for near-field and far-field exposure scenarios with anatomical human phantoms and complex sources. Robin successfully demonstrated how Sim4Life can be extended to create reproducible, scalable, and user-friendly simulation tools that significantly reduce manual intervention while improving the statistical significance of simulation results.