Everybody has a “favorite” pursuit; some even spend their lives practicing and perfecting a particular interest. In that vein, PET has been a longtime “pet” project for Peter S. Conti, M.D., Ph.D.: The 45-year-old physician and researcher has made nuclear medicine and PET his specialty for about 25 years.
Currently associate professor of radiology, pharmacy and biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), Conti also weighs in as director of both radiology research and the PET Imaging Science Center at the university’s Keck School of Medicine (Los Angeles). In addition to numerous other professional memberships, activities and associations, he is concluding his fourth — and final — year as chairman of the Scientific Program Committee at the Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM of Reston, Va.). A native of Yonkers, N.Y., Conti graduated from Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.) in 1978 with a degree in natural sciences and completed his medical degree at Cornell University Medical College (New York) in 1985. That same year, he received his Ph.D. in biophysics from Cornell’s Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Sloan-Kettering Division (New York).
As Conti indicated in a recent conversation with Medical Imaging, PET imaging, as a clinical application, has a relatively short history — about 10 years. Yet, PET technology built a solid foundation in the research environment where it had been kicking around for 25 or 30 years. During that time, Conti has immersed himself in the field, garnering a reputation as a respected and prolific investigator, lecturer, reviewer and publisher, while also lending his expertise to national advisory boards, such as the FDA’s Radiopharmaceutical Committee for development of manufacturing guidelines and approval mechanisms for clinical indications of PET radiopharmaceuticals, and to commercial medical advisory boards, such as Mobile P.E.T. Systems, Inc. (San Diego).
Please refer to the June 2001 issue for the complete story. For information on article reprints, contact Martin St. Denis
