Naomi Matsuura
Dr. Naomi Matsuura is an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, with a cross-appointments in the Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Medicine and the Departments of Electrical & Computer Engineering and Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto. She is also the founding Director of the Biomaterials Manufacturing Cluster (BioMC), created to support cross-disciplinary partnerships and international collaborations for large-scale, transformative, clinically focused, biomaterials engineering projects.
Professor Matsuura’s Medical Imaging Materials Laboratory specializes in designing new material systems for applications relating to medical imaging and image-guided therapy. Her research program spans across multiple disciplines; from synthetic chemistry to physicochemical characterization, preclinical evaluation in vivo, and commercialization, with the eventual goal of clinical translation in partnership with her clinical collaborators located at hospital sites across Toronto. Research areas include synthesis and characterization of activated theranostic agents, biodegradable microparticles and bulk material composites, disease-specific tissue mimicking imaging and therapy phantoms, and application of multiwavelength surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for sensitive and rapid chip-based classification of disease.
Awards received include the John C. Polanyi Prize in Physiology/Medicine and Physics, an Early Researcher Award (Government of Ontario), a 2020 Suffrage Science Award (MRC London Institute of Medical Sciences, UK) and the 2022 WIMIN Mid-Career Award (World Molecular Imaging Society).
Dr. Matsuura serves on the Board of Trustees of the World Molecular Imaging Society (WMIS) and is a member of a national network of Canadian medical imaging scientists (WMIScan). She serves as a Senior Editor of the Nanomaterials and Delivery Platform Section for the journal Molecular Imaging and Biology (MIB), the official medical journal for the Academy of Molecular Imaging, and sits on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Nanobiotechnology. She serves on the NanoMedicine Innovation Network (NMIN) HQP Program Advisory Committee and is a member of the Advisory Committee for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for WMIS.