Maryellen Giger

Class of 2016-17

The University of Chicago
National Academy of Engineering
Academic Career Achievement Award, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

An expert in computer-aided diagnosis as well as digital signal and image processing, Maryellen Giger has produced interdisciplinary research that spans medical physics, engineering, data processing, radiology, and radiomics. In 2013, the International Congress on Medical Physics named Giger as one of the fifty medical physicists with the most impact on the field in the last fifty years.

Giger earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, physics, and health sciences from Illinois Benedictine College in 1978. She received a master’s in physics from the University of Exeter, England, in 1979 and a doctoral degree in medical physics in 1985 from the University of Chicago.

After more than three years as a research associate in the University of Chicago’s Department of Radiology, Giger became an assistant professor in 1986 and an associate professor in 1991. In 1998, she became director of graduate programs in medical physics as well as a professor in the Department of Radiology and the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division in 2000.

In 2013, Giger became the A. N. Pritzker Professor of Radiology at the University of Chicago. Her research in computational image-based analyses of breast cancer for risk assessment, diagnosis, prognosis, response to therapy, and biological discovery has yielded various translated components. Her current research uses image-based phenotypes in imaging genomics association studies.

Giger is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Radiological Society of North America, the Society for Computer Applications in Radiology, and the Association of University Radiologists. She is a member or fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, and the International Society for Optical Engineering. In 2013, she became an inaugural fellow in the University of Chicago’s Institute for Molecular Engineering.

Giger has received the Association of University Radiologists’ Stauffer Award (1995 and 2000), the American Association of Physicists in Medicine’s William D. Coolidge Gold Medal, the University of Texas’ Hollingsworth Lectureship in Engineering, Benedictine University’s Distinguished Science Alumni Award, and Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society’s Academic Career Achievement Award.

Giger served as a visiting professor at the Mayo Clinic in 1996.

She has generated more than 230 articles in peer-reviewed publications and twenty-four book chapters.

As a Faculty Fellow in the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study, Giger will collaborate with faculty–researchers in the College of Engineering as well as with scientists and clinicians in the Texas A&M Health Science Center, the Houston Medical Center, and local hospitals.

For more updated information: 
https://profiles.uchicago.edu/profiles/display/37081