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Kimberly Kelly: Hi everyone and welcome back to our molecular imaging and biology podcast. MIB is the official journal of WMIS, ESMI, and FASMI. So I am your editor in chief and your host for this podcast. And it is my distinct pleasure to be able to welcome Michelle James here onto the podcast. So Michelle and I have known each other for a long time. and we
Michelle James: Okay.
Kimberly Kelly: were even auctioneers for the WIMIN's interest group for their art auction. And I have to say it's a fabulous time. And if you are going to WMIC in Salt Lake City this year, it is a not to be missed event. So anyway, we will get right started. So, Michelle, it's a pleasure. So why don't you introduce our introduce yourself and yeah, take it away.
Michelle James: Yes, well, it is wonderful to be with you all. And thank you, Kim, for the invitation to be on this podcast. Always love chatting with you and very passionate about MIB and our society. So this is just an absolute honor. So my name is Michelle James. As Kim said, I am an associate professor at Stanford University, in jointly appointed between radiology and neurology there within the molecular imaging program. And I've been there about 18 years now. which is kind of mind blowing, yeah, and just has been a wonderful ride.
Kimberly Kelly: Wow, that's just so impressive. So Michelle was recruited to the MIPS program. And for those of you that don't know, the MIPS program was really started by the late Sam Gambhir And for those of us who've had the pleasure to have known him, just not only a titan in the field, but truly a giving, kind, and amazing mentor. So he recruited Michelle from Australia. Is that correct?
Michelle James: That is right. Yes. So originally I'm from Sydney, Australia. And you may or may not be able to tell now because my accent's gotten a little bit more dilute, I hear, from my family and friends. When I go back, they're like, what are you what do you say? So
Kimberly Kelly: You can't.
Michelle James: yes, but I was recruited as a postdoc into Sam's lab. And I remember talking to him on the phone, an actual phone on the wall with a wire. We didn't have Zoom or anything fancy like that. I'd actually never met him, but I'd heard about him and read a lot of papers, of course.
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: And so I had spoken to him and he said, Look, I I would want you to come for three years minimum. And I thought, wow, that's a long time. And I remember telling my mom, okay, I'm just gonna do this and then come straight back to Australia. Don't worry, just gonna learn what
Kimberly Kelly: You don't have to.
Michelle James: I can and come back. And then I remember the first. day being at Stanford and in Sam's lab and just walking around the campus and seeing all of the incredible like equipment and interacting with the people, the energy there is just unreal. I thought, I don't think I'm ever going home. So or at least not for a while.
Kimberly Kelly: And you do, you you do
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for holidays, but you
Michelle James: I do, I do.
Kimberly Kelly: you are now like from that postdoc to an amazing faculty member and an associate professor. I mean, that's that's truly amazing. I mean, so tell us a little bit about your work. Like what what are you
Michelle James: Yes.
Kimberly Kelly: what are you what are you really excited about? I I had the pleasure of visiting Michelle out in Stanford and the whole the whole Stanford radiology and got to speak with her grad students and fantastic work. So Michelle, what what's one of your highlights?
Michelle James: Thank you. Yes, lots to say there. And I do just want to mention that Kim was actually the aruna bodapati gambhir
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: lecturer for this year. And so that's why we invited her out. So thank you so much for doing that. And couldn't be given
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: by a a more amazing person such as you. So thank you for honoring Aruna's legacy
Kimberly Kelly: Uh-huh.
Michelle James: and also sort of calling back to so she was Sam's wife and yeah, so just it's been an absolute honor and privilege to have grown up in science in the SAM under Sam's mentorship. And like you said, now I've been able to start my own lab, and that was
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: close to 10 years ago now, and I have been really just focusing on forging ahead with trying to Better understand the role of the immune system in the context of neurological diseases. And so I'm a radiochemist by background, although
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: these days I masquerade a little as a neuroimmunologist
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: and molecular biologist, and you name it. That's just what the field of imaging calls for. And I love that. But really, I design and develop novel radiotracers, particularly focused on pet. For illuminating different aspects of both the innate and the adaptive immune system, sort of their functional phenotypes in diseases like multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease. And in the last few years, a big focus has, and it's a growing focus in my lab, has been MECFS, which is known as chronic fatigue syndrome. And yeah, it's been really just a an unreal time
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: to be. Able to apply the tools of molecular imaging to be able to image and make visible what has been invisible for patients that have been suffering with diseases like that, especially for people with MECFS, where all of their tests have traditionally come back negative. These people are bedbound, unfortunately, suffering from disabling fatigue, extensive pain, all sorts of brain fog and. Debilitating symptoms, right? But their MRIs are negative, their blood tests are usually negative. And we've been able to now apply some of the tools that have been developed in my lab to visualize molecular alterations throughout the entire body and brain. And so that for me has been one of the most amazing things that I've been a part of,
just to be able to interact with the patients and see what it's meant to them to have their disease affirmed. And for now, we're now taking this to Further so that we can actually use these tools to select and monitor therapies. And that's been a huge limitation for these
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: patients because they they haven't been able to have extensive clinical trials since there hasn't been a good way to definitively diagnose. There's been no biomarker to be able to assess efficacy of therapies. So we feel like we're making progress for patients. And yeah, so that's a little bit about what we're doing.
Kimberly Kelly: That that's just truly amazing. And that just speaks to how important our field is to be able to visualize those molecular differences in a whole system, whether that's animals or humans. And as you said, you're making a
Michelle James: Right.
Kimberly Kelly: direct difference in patient lives. So what has been the most and that's molecular imaging and biology. We love to publish things like that. so what's been the most surprising biology? that you've learned from the imaging studies? Like what's your target that you know that you're imaging and and what's the biology?
Michelle James: Yeah, it's lots of things, Kim, over the years. and that's why I love science. You know, these moments where you're like, hmm, that's strange, or what is that? You know,
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: I wasn't expecting that. And I think that this sort of ties into sort of what you're doing with MIB and and publishing and getting out there, and we'll come back to that. But certainly the ability to look at a whole system sort of
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: In vivo, being able to study molecular processes has been able to illuminate many things that I've been doing throughout my career. One, so I mainly, like I said, target the immune system. I do a lot on innate immune cells, so like your macrophages
Kimberly Kelly: Okay.
Michelle James: or microglia. I love those cells. My personal favorites. and yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah. We do get really attached to them, right? I was like, I love my little microglia. Like I get so excited. I'm like, that's my friend. I really like that one. And it's like, I don't think the cells reciprocate back, is all I'm saying. But yeah.
Michelle James: And sometimes I feel like they're saying, because I was focused on microglia, and then I feel like the peripheral myeloid cells were like, hey, we're here, like look
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: at look at us. And so I think that was one of the big things that surprised me maybe maybe five to seven,
Kimberly Kelly: Really?
Michelle James: seven years ago, was I was so focused on the brain, Kim, for so long. Like that's how
Kimberly Kelly: Well
Michelle James: I fell in love with this, like just science in general. I wanted to understand the brain and why things would go wrong, why
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Michelle James:
people got Alzheimer's. So that's what got me in.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm. I'd like my
Michelle James: So then I started developing imaging agents to look at immune cells like microglia in the brain. So that's where I was focused. And then I started to see things were happening outside of the brain that were communicating with the brain. And interestingly, one of the imaging agents we made a number of years ago targeting TREM 1, and that's the triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: one. I was trying to come up with something really specific for microglia. Turns out
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: it's not really on microglia. That is more on the peripheral infiltrating myeloid cells. And so it's really
Kimberly Kelly: Mm. Okay.
Michelle James: illuminated sort of what's happening outside of the brain in conditions like stroke, for instance. We have a really nice paper showing that the gut was lighting up shortly after a stroke and that would worsen outcomes.
Kimberly Kelly: Really?
Michelle James: Yes, the gut. I know, I wasn't even
Kimberly Kelly: Wow.
Michelle James: thinking about that. We thought spleen maybe, so we were kind of looking in the body, and then we're like, why
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: is the gut lighting up? But again, this is the power of molecular imaging. We we're sort of unbiased in the way that we can just look at everything, give us all the data,
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: and then we need to interpret it. And that's something I love.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: But yeah, the gut was lighting up, and that was because there are these sympathetic outputs that that occur shortly after stroke, and the the gut barrier becomes leaky, you get translocation of bacteria, and then macrophages that are in the gut come out and actually traffic into the brain and cause a lot of damage.
Kimberly Kelly: Wow.
Michelle James: So really my what what you can do and what we did after discovering that is we worked with one of my amazing collaborators at Stanford, Katie Andreessen to then close up that gut that gut barrier after stroke and we showed we could improve outcomes. So yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: Wow. See and and that that's just so amazing and and so cool. And you know, and for trainees, the biggest thing that I the the trainees get really discouraged, right? They have a hypothesis and and we are like, okay, what's your expected outcome? Right. And if it doesn't exactly match their expected outcome, it didn't work, and they get a little bit flustered. But some of the best, and so what I'm always telling them is some of the best and most transformative work that we've done is people keep it keeping an open mind, being like, Well, I don't understand what's happening with the gut. And instead of just dismissing it as, you know, leakiness or nonspecific targeting, finding something like that, and then now you can actually improve outcomes. And and now
people can start studying, well, what is it about that gut like what is the stroke releasing that opens the gut barrier that then signals right? And it opens up a whole new avenue of of science and medicine that you wouldn't have known. And if you hadn't have been doing the whole body molecular imaging with the appropriate controls,
Michelle James: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: y you never would have seen that hot spot and then
Michelle James: Mm-hmm.
Kimberly Kelly: really started to it. That's so it's it's just a reminder for the trainees that sometimes you don't you you don't always get what you want, but you get what you need from the famous song, right?
Michelle James: I agree, Kim. I agree. And it's this happens often. And it is the path of science. It's it's difficult and it's
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: it's there are lots of ups and downs, and we work so hard. It is like running a marathon every day when you're on the ground in the lab running molecular imaging studies, I think. And
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: it's it's brutal, but it's also exciting and fun and energetic. I've had yeah, one of my recent grad students was getting really sad because her Mice just weren't getting better from a therapy she was treating them with. They just can't get better. And then, you know, she had a couple of mice that responded. She was like, it just keeps failing. I'm like, why don't you just image them and see? Like you're, you know, she's trying to repr reproduce data in the literature, which doesn't always work, right? And I said, just keep going,
Kimberly Kelly: Right. Really?
Michelle James: keep going. And she did, and she she thought it was all a failed experiment. But in actual fact, what we saw is our imaging agent could. delineate between responders and non-responders and sort of predict who was going to respond. And it was kind
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: of nice, a blessing in disguise that we had some responding
Kimberly Kelly: Right.
Michelle James: and some not, that we could then show the power of that imaging approach. Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: Right. Wow. Yeah, I mean that's a that's a a just a great example, right? And there's great value in being able to predict doing patient treatment selection based on imaging. I mean, that's just amazing.
Michelle James: I agree.
Kimberly Kelly: So switching gears a little bit, Michelle was at one time before she got really busy, she was a section editor for MIB. So Michelle, when you were section editor, and and you've been with the society and the journal forever, what kind of papers really just excited you? Like what should people be publishing in MIB?
Michelle James: Yeah, that that's a great question. I I think that, I mean, it as you mentioned, it's the flagship journal for our field of molecular imaging and and for the various societies connected to molecular imaging. I
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: think the nice thing about imaging is that it's so diverse in time in terms of the kinds of techniques you can use. I loved seeing sort of creative ways of combining different modalities,
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: looking at completely different image like disease models. That I hadn't even thought about using. So I think people that were exploring or different fields or collaborating in a very interdisciplinary manner and then bringing in imaging
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: to add value there. I think I always loved seeing those papers, like not just
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: the the the same old, but and I did see a lot of really cool and creative papers. And it didn't have to be like, okay, this is everything. This is like a full blown, you know. From concept to clinic, but even just hey, like this is an early stage idea. We're shedding light on this process.
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: And like, please, like, take a look at this and see. And I feel like the thing I really loved was that the this sort of streamlined nature of MIB, you could get things would come in quickly, get reviewed, we get the feedback. There's a lot of quick interaction. And then things could get published. So I think it's a And actually, Sam Gambhir used to say this as well that to our lab back in the day when I was a trainee many, many years ago, that like, let's let's put our first, you know, create our first paper creating a new imaging agent into MIB. Like we just get it out there, like because
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: one, you know, it it just gets it out there in the community and people can start using it and testing
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: it. And then you can then spend your time getting things into maybe the larger order species and into into humans potentially. Not to say you can't publish on the human data in MIB, but to get it out there so you can get feedback and also to to show our field just what creative new things are coming down the pipeline. So that that's
Kimberly Kelly: Thank you
Michelle James: always what excites me is a potential for translation, the the innovation, sort of any anything new that I just hadn't heard of before. And I think MIB is a hotbed for that kind of publication.
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah, it it it really is, especially since we're a friendly audience. Like you don't have to convince us, like me or the the reviewers, that molecular imaging is important. Sometimes when you go to other journals, it's like, okay, well, what why this new instrument? Or why
Michelle James: Who cares? Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: another radio why another radio tracer? For cancer, we already have FDG PET. So why would we need FAPI or something, right? Like and so we already are simpatico, like we we already understand, and so we can see the innovation and how things are are pushing forward without having to really show innovation to to other journals. And as you mentioned, our timelines are better. So we've actually got it down to first
time. from submission to first decision around nineteen days. So we've been
Michelle James: That is crazy.
Kimberly Kelly: we have been working very hard. So for the section editors and also for all the reviewers, thank you so much. It's it's it's a lot of work, but it it's the effort is great. so yeah.
Michelle James: Thank you for all your hard work on this, Kim. And like two things. One, I've been telling ever since I learned about this very rapid timeline, I've been telling my lab, okay, what are we submitting to MIB Let's get things
Kimberly Kelly: We mean
Michelle James: out there. Cause you know, there are there are people in in all of our labs and and people we know that are are trying to apply for grad school. They need their paper out
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: before they can interview. And they've got great
Kimberly Kelly: Right.
Michelle James: work. So I'm like, let's go somewhere where one, like you said, the reviewers are gonna know the field, they know our work
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: and They can, they're they're friendly in the sense that they already get it. They get the importance of that. And then you can get things out rapidly. It's going to help people with their careers.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: It's not stuck in limbo forever. And
Kimberly Kelly: Right.
Michelle James: then the last thing I heard that I wanted to know, is it really true? Do you really read every paper that comes that's submitted? What? How do you do this?
Kimberly Kelly: Do. I read every paper. I I get so I so Monday and Thursdays are my MIB days. and I just you know, all of us are curious people,
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: but I so I my PhD was in oncology, actually, oncological sciences. So I come at this from a solid molecular background, and then I postdoced in Ralph Weissleder's lab, which is where I started doing the imaging. so it's that marriage of knowing the biology, but also
Michelle James: Mm-hmm.
Kimberly Kelly: using the imaging to really understand biology in a full system. Like that is just really super cool. Exactly like what you were talking about, really just you know, butters my bread, if you want to say. I'm in the south, so I have to use these expressions. and and
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: it's because You you never would have been able to understand and see how that worked if you weren't doing the systems imaging to track how these molecules are interacting with each other. And so for our field, you really have to have a strong biology cell and molecular component, also with being able to do some aspect of imaging, either instrumentation or tracer or particles or something like that.
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: So we are truly ourselves multidisciplinary. So anytime that I can read something that's like I I will not say I'm a domain expert on half the things. So I will read it and I'll be like, I think this is super cool. But the section editors really I give
them a lot of leeway to be like, yeah, Kim, this was done 20 years ago. Like you're just reading it, but no, that's not gonna work right. because I don't pretend to know
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: you know, anything about like neuro, for example, and and stuff like that. So that's where the review process and and having the domain experts as the section editors are are critically important. But yeah, I love to read all of the papers. I I am
Michelle James: So impressed.
Kimberly Kelly: a sucker. I am a sucker for that kind of knowledge. So
Michelle James: Well and I think that that Kim and sorry to interrupt, but I I really do think that
Kimberly Kelly: Mm.
Michelle James: that just shows the level of care and dedication that that is going into this journal, which like makes it warms my heart. I'm just like, yeah, like that's you that's like you really care about our our community and
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: field and that filters down. I know the the the editors that you've you've selected all all are aligned with that.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: And so it it really is a a wonderful, welcoming journal to submit to and and you
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: you're you're making it so. So thank you for all the hard work.
Kimberly Kelly: You're welcome. Well, so getting back to you. So the last time I saw you in person, you were receiving an award at SNMMI. So what was the award?
Michelle James: Well, yes, it was the Sam Gambhir Trailblazer Award at SNMMI,
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: which yes, was a is a very special and deeply personal award for me. I obviously wish that the award didn't exist. I wish Sam was still here.
Kimberly Kelly: yeah, yeah.
Michelle James: Miss him every day. And we're just doing everything we can to keep his vision and legacy alive. He inspires us all the time and me personally. So the award, yeah, was something that I It it really means the world to me. I I was mentored
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: by Sam for over twelve years and he it it really represents I think what he's taught me and what I've been able what
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: now I'm able to do and and continue in that vein of leading with kindness and and focus really on patients. So everything we do
Kimberly Kelly: Mm.
Michelle James: and every day when I when I get out of bed, it's I'm thinking how what am I doing? Like how is this gonna impact patient care and it's it's exciting for me. So I think that just having experienced that kind of mentorship from Sam, I hadn't ever been
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: around someone that was an MD and a PhD that was you know, a mentor for me. And so it was very new. And sometimes he would come into lab meetings, sort of racing in from the clinic and sort of sit down. And we're all we're all no one would sit in that front row where he sat because we're all scared, sitting back here.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: And
he would come in and he would say, Okay, I just came from the clinic. Sorry, it's a bit late. And we're like, okay. And he's like, you know what? I saw some really hard things today. And we're like, And then he would tell us a story. And he would say, if any of you in this room forget for even a minute why you're here doing what you're doing, I want you to come with me over to the clinic
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: and see the patients that are there. They're waiting for us. They're waiting. For a cure. They're waiting for a way to detect and track their disease so we can improve therapies. And we'd all just be like frozen, like, whoa, you're right. And he would, he would take us over there and show us things. And I thought, that how powerful is that? and being at a place like Stanford, I I know I'm lucky for sure that we're right our sort of our
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: imaging department and like radiology and neurology, we're we're right at the hospitals. We got to work with a lot of clinicians. And so I think that yeah, being able to receive an award like this really is is all due to having the sort of mentorship that I that I had from Sam and being able to lead my career in a way that's very patient focused and sort of mentoring and leading with kindness, that I know you and I have talked quite a lot about too. that
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah. Cause I mean it he just he just proves that you can be brilliant and and be impactful and you don't have to be a jerk, you know. I mean, like there
Michelle James: It exactly.
Kimberly Kelly: there's a certain phenotype that people expect, like, that either aloof scientist, you know, clinician or like to get things done you have to just you know do these things, but you don't. You can be kind, like You can
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: you you know, as Machiavelli said, you know, it's better to be feared than loved, but in in a lot of cases that's not true. Like we can do amazing work and still at the end of the day be decent human beings. So but I I'm just so excited for you in winning that award because you know, you're not up and coming, you've definitely arrived. And it's it's you know been just great to see all of the things that you've accomplished. So in the last couple of minutes of this, speaking of Michelle and her awesomeness, she is on the she is on the slate. So people can vote for her as president of WMIS coming up. So there's gonna be an election coming up. And in all transparency and fairness, all three of the people that are on the candidate ballot box are getting free equal time. So look out for podcasts with me and Jim Delikatny and also me and Jeff Bulte. But right now
Michelle James: Yeah.
Kimberly Kelly: let's focus on Michelle. So Michelle, like, what why do you want to be president of WMIS?
Michelle James: Well, yes, first I love WMIS. I really do. I have such a heart for it. I feel like I grew up as a scientist in this society. And
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: it it wasn't, you know, by design. It was something I I really fell into because of coming over here. And I remember in the first week of landing in the US, I was a little Australian, not knowing anyone. And Sam said, Everyone in the lab is going to WMIS in Nice. And I was like,
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: Nice France, wow, that's cool. And in any case,
Kimberly Kelly: Okay.
Michelle James: I I I traveled over there. I didn't know anyone. I just hadn't met anyone. And I'd never been to that conference. And immediately, I have to say, I just felt very welcomed. And it was people of all different backgrounds and positions were coming up to me and and just saying, hey, like they saw me by myself, and they would say, Like, what are you doing? And I'd tell them my story and they'd sit down and and have a chat with me. I had coffees with people I'd never met and I'd made some friends and we went dancing, of course. You know, there's I just think there's
Kimberly Kelly: Yes. I I love me a Dance. The gala is my highlight
Michelle James: We've got to go dance.
Kimberly Kelly: of the year. I'm not gonna lie about it.
Michelle James: Right? It's so fun. And that's the thing. So all of this to say, I felt like I I was really welcomed in and from that moment have gone to nearly every WMIC that I could attend, apart from when I had my my little baby girl. But
Kimberly Kelly: Yes.
Michelle James: yes, who we love. And but
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: yeah, I think what what's really stood out to me is that I I've met friends and mentors and colleagues, collaborators, just people that I I truly adore and have have helped me so much and that that are in my my world now for for life. You're one of them, Kim. And yeah, it's just
Kimberly Kelly: Mm. Yes, yeah.
Michelle James: been it's been such a delight and to be part of various aspects of WMIS. like I I served on the board for a while and was part of WIMIN like I mentioned
Kimberly Kelly: yeah. Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: and have done moderating and all sorts of things. It's really strengthened all the relationships and just fit aspects of my own science, just going and learning from others. And I have so many collaborators now because of meetings that that I've been to because of WMIS. And so I'd say that in addition to now, like, and this is a really heartwarming special part, is I see my trainees
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: getting to experience the same thing. They're now the beneficiaries of. the WMIS community. And I think the community of WMIS is what I I just really, I really love and
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: I'm so thankful for. And I see my trainees now getting opportunities to be in differ serve in different capacities or be mentored by people that they they never thought they could. I have my trainees saying, can I go up and talk to Jason Lewis? Is that okay? I'm like, yes,
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: you know, and I feel like
there are people in our community, Anna Wu and I mean so many people that are very accessible. And they want to help and they care deeply about trainees
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: and they take time for it. So now I
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: feel like I want is a time to give back. And I that's a huge drawing factor and pull for me to wanna serve as president. I want to keep this good thing going. And there's a number of things
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: I'd love to focus on that I have a vision for for the upcoming year as well that I can share a little bit about too if you'd like.
Kimberly Kelly: Yes. Yes. Do you wanna give us a little preview, a little taste of what your your
Michelle James: But
Kimberly Kelly: vision? So so I mean, just so everybody knows, like being president is not just like a title holder, like it's actually service. And so as Michelle was saying, to be president you have to have a deep love for the society and and a real willingness and desire to serve. So so what's your vision? What's your what do you what do you
Michelle James: Yeah, well I think am I thinking? So yeah, I mean lots of things, but I I think four main areas that I'm really wanting to focus on would be firstly really trying to make the the membership even more global and diverse. So I've got some ideas around that because it is the World Molecular Imaging Society
Kimberly Kelly: I mean I think.
Michelle James: and I'm from Australia myself and it's hard for people in Australia even or just at different corners
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michelle James: of the globe to get access. To
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: what this wonderful community. So I have thoughts around that. Secondly, I think one of the key strengths already, like I was mentioning, is the mentorship and training that is provided
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: through this society. So I want to lean more into that and sort of formalize some some different avenues there that are more some creative ideas. And then thirdly, I really think that WMIS is such a an amazing Society for incubating early stage ideas. because I
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: think it really is a place where innovation and creativity and sort of this out-of-the-box crazy things thrive. Like we're we're not an SNMMI that is all clinic, you it's not all clinical, but it's
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: very much focused there. We're we're really early stage and we can we can have fun with that. So I think I'd love to bring back something like Shark Tank or other ideas. where
Kimberly Kelly: yeah.
Michelle James: Where we get to give people a chance, you know, people that are maybe in industry or students or staff, people that have crazy ideas that want to pitch pitch ideas or companies that we can
Kimberly Kelly: That's
Michelle James: help to get products to the clinic to make have a big impact. So sort of something to do with that. And then lastly, I really want to ensure that we have complete transparency about how WMIS is run and how decisions are made, sort of making it. really accessible. And just, you know, I I want it to be something that everyone feels like they they they know what's happening and they they're they have ownership over and they're part of. And yeah, just to make those conversations very fluid.
Kimberly Kelly: Mm-hmm.
Michelle James: Yeah. So that's that's some of the areas I'm excited.
Kimberly Kelly: Those are those are all amazing. and that's those are really great, especially harnessing your experience and the warmth and the culture that has been created, leveraging those to take them even further. that just sounds so amazing. Well, Michelle, we are out of time, but I as always have had the best time talking with you. can't wait to see you in Salt Lake City.
Michelle James: Yes, I thank you so much for having me. Always love talking with you, Kim. And yeah, see you all at Salt
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah.
Michelle James: Lake City.
Kimberly Kelly: Perfect. but make make sure everybody, if you see us, stop by and say hi.
Michelle James: Yes, please say hi and we'll have a coffee or a maybe a dance.
Kimberly Kelly: Yeah, definitely a dance. I'm I'm all in. So all right. bye
Michelle James: Thank you. Bye.