award - usedAt its annual scientific meeting, the Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation recently bestowed its Leaders in Innovation Awards to two pioneers in the field.

The recipients were Lindsay Machan, an interventional radiologist at Vancouver Hospital, British Columbia, and Kieran J. Murphy, an interventional radiologist at the University of Toronto, both in Canada.

“SIR Foundation award winners demonstrate a passion for medical breakthroughs that improve patient care,” said Stephen T. Kee, 2014-15 foundation board chair and professor and chief of interventional radiology at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in California. “The Leaders in Innovation Award honors two of our specialty’s visionaries who have each created numerous devices and pioneered advances in the treatment of complex conditions.”

An associate professor of radiology at the University of British Columbia, Machan specializes in infertility and gynecological interventions as well as aortic and peripheral arterial disease. He has designed many devices and holds patents on multiple drug and device technologies, including drug-eluting stents.

Murphy, the vice chair and chief of medical imaging at the University of Toronto, has focused his practice in the area of acute stroke interventions and the assessment of brain perfusion. His devices for vertebroplasty to treat painful spine compressions are frequently used worldwide.

The foundation also handed out its Dr. Gary J. Becker Young Investigator Award, which recognizes promising young practitioners to encourage the pursuit of academic careers, to Sharon Kwan, of the University of Washington, Seattle. Kwan’s research explored the survival outcomes of sublobar resection and thermal ablation for early-stage non-small cell lung cancer in older patients. The award is supported in part through a Discovery Campaign donation from Covidien.

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