Laura Schreiber

Promotional Video at the Comprehensive Heart Failure Center, Wuerzburg University Clinics, Germany (2021, in german)

Science

I am a physicist by education and have spent my whole career since the start of my PhD thesis in 1991 in the highly interdisciplinary field of biomedical imaging, in particular magnetic resonance imaging. I am also a DGMP-certified medical physicist and hold a habilitation degree in medical physics from Mainz University.

My key interest and expertise is to conquer into new fields and places, and to bring new activities to life. When I started into my career as a PhD student in the early 1990s, medical imaging physics was virtually nonexistent as a scientific field, as weren’t longterm professional careers in that field, not to speak of tenured professorships. I was nominated one of the first associate professors of medical physics in Germany in 2004. Since 2014 I am full professor at the Medical Faculty of Würzburg University. In these roles, I have always gone to new places and built up new groups, departments, and organizations.

Now in a more advanced stage of my career I find myself also in leadership positions, e.g. at the Comprehensive Heart Failure Center Würzburg (Germany), where I am in the process of of establishing a new translational ultrahighfield MRI research infrastructure, and where I am head of the Department of Cardiovascular Imaging and Member of the Board of Directors. Moreover, I am head of the Chair of Molecular and Cellular Imaging of the Medical Faculty of Würzburg University.

My currenty scientific interests include ultrahighfield-MRI (7T) of the heart, artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, and scientific infrastructures. Earlier in my career I have been Professor of Medical Physics at the Department of Radiology of Mainz University Hospitals, where we were one of the first groups worldwide developing innovative lung MRI techniques based on hyperpolarized Helium-3 or perfluorinated gases. My group was instrumental in the development of the MRI techniques as well as image postprocessing and physiologic modeling software. I have a longterm interest in quantitatively measurement brain, pulmonary, tumor, and cardiac perfusion measurements, including one of the first pixel-by-pixel absolute brain perfusion analysis, first application of steady-state-free precession-based pulse sequences for cardiac perfusion MRI. More recently, high-performance computing-based computational fluid dynamics simulations helped us understand blood flow dynamics in the coronary arteries and systematic errors in cardiac perfusion MRI, and has recently led to the most sophisticated in-silico model of epicardial blood flow and mass transport. Since more recently, we also try to use methods of machine and deep learning to improve image quality and spatial resolution (superresolution), and to predict disease outcome on the basis of multiparametric imaging.

Science Management

Science is an exciting and demanding professional endaveour which needs creativity, independent thinking, and freedom. It also profits from a stimulating environment, excellent scientific infrastructures and – increasingly – wide interdisciplinary collaborations. Excellent, modern, and science-adequate management and leadership supports and fosters the creation of new knowledge, and it helps to bring diverse people together to jointly move on their scientific and personal path. Therefore, I also have formal eduction (MBA) in science and higher eduction management of the University of Applied Sciences of Osnabrück which, at the time, was one of the very few universities offering postgraduate education in that field. As such, I am currently member of the Management Board of the CHFC, and I was longterm board member as well as president of the German Society of Medical Physics (DGMP), the largest scientific association of phycisists in medicine in the German speaking countries, right in the heart of Europe.

Mentoring and Professional Coaching

Discussion is essential for science. However, in environments where highly motiviated people with strong willpower meet in a competitive international field, interpersonal conflict also may come up from time to time. To support other scientists deal with roles, demands, insecurity, leadership roles, and conflict, I serve since many years as a mentor in institutional mentoring programs. As the Ombudsperson for Good Scientific Practice for the Medical Faculty of Würzburg University I also support conflicting scientists to ideally find ways to solve conflicts before they become virulent, and to prevent scientific misconduct. I also hold a formal eduction as a Professional Coach for Business and Adminstration from the Leadership Academy Baden-Württemberg (certified by DBVC, Germany’s largest professional association of business coaches). I am also one of the few active science leaders who in a private business offers systemic coaching services for scientists and physicians.