Henry N. Wagner Jr., MD, Best Paper Award

This award celebrates the considerable contribution of Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, to the fields of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging.  Considered one of the founders of the field of nuclear medicine as a scientific and medical specialty, the impact that Dr. Wagner had on the field is immeasurable.

For over 30 years, Dr. Wagner presented the Highlights lecture at the SNMMI Annual Meeting.  This tradition has continued with the Henry N. Wagner Jr. Highlights Symposium, a plenary session that brings the SNMMI Annual Meeting to a close with 4 experts presenting highlights in the fields of cardiology, neuroscience, oncology and general nuclear medicine.  The Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, Best Paper Award recognizes outstanding science and identifies the top abstract presented at the meeting.  The award will be selected using Dr. Wagner’s long-standing criteria:  is it true?  Is it new?  Is it well-designed?  And is it meaningful?

Dr. Wagner trained more than 500 radiologists, internists, physicians, and scientists, eight of whom went on to become president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine —a position Wagner himself held from 1970 to 1971. He also served as president of the World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology from 1975 to 1978. Dr. Wagner was the first to employ radioactive tracers for the rapid diagnosis of pulmonary embolism and coronary artery disease, which led to significant advances in those fields.

This award is established through the generosity of the Wagner family.

An ad hoc panel of experts including representatives from the Scientific Program Committee, SNMMI Leadership, and a representative from the Wagner family will select the awardee based on the above-referenced criteria and the significance of the submitted abstract/paper. 

This award includes a $2,000 prize and a plaque given to the presenting author/selected awardee at the SNMMI Annual Meeting’s Henry N. Wagner, Jr., MD, Highlights Symposium.

Previous Winners:

2023 - Neeta Pandit-Taskar, MD, Individualized dosing for high-dose targeted radiation of hematopoietic cells with Iomab-B (I131-apamistamab) prior to HCT in relapsed refractory acute myeloid leukemia (R/R AML): Safety and efficacy results from the pivotal phase 3 SIERRA trial

2022 - Chandrasekhar Bal, MD, DSc, A Phase II clinical study on 225Ac-DOTATATE Therapy in Advanced Stage Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Patients

2021 - Chandrasekhar Bal, MD, DSc, Long-term outcome of 225Ac-DOTATATE Targeted Alpha Therapy in Patients with Metastatic Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors

2020 - Jonathan S. Wall, Clinical detection of systemic amyloidosis by PET/CT imaging using 124I-p5+14 peptide

2019 - Xuezhu Zhang, PhD, Total-Body Parametric Imaging using Kernel and Direct Reconstruction on the uEXPLORER

2018 - Stal Shrestha, Evaluation of a novel positron emission tomographic radioligand to measure cyclooxygenase-2 in a model of neuroinflammation in rhesus macaque

2017 - Raiyan Tripti Zaman, PhD, Harnessing Radioluminescence and Sound to Reveal Molecular Pathology of Atherosclerotic Plaques

2016 - Mark T. Madsen, PhD, Personalized kidney dosimetry for Y-90 DOTATOC radionuclide Therapy

2015 - Christine M. Sandiego, Systemic endotoxin induces a robust increase in microglial activation measured with [11C]PBR28 and PET in humans

2014 - Flavia Niccolini, MD, Brain phosphodiesterase 10A (PDE-10A) density in early premanifest HD gene carriers