Professor Mehmet Akçakaya elevated to Fellow of the ISMRM

Professor and holder of the Jim and Sara Anderson Chair Mehmet Akçakaya was recently honored as a Fellow of The International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), class of 2026. This is in recognition of his significant and sustained contributions to research, the Society, and the advancement of education in magnetic resonance (MR), in particular for his pioneering contributions to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) reconstruction, denoising, and artificial intelligence methods. 

Akçakaya’s research is primarily focused on computational imaging, physics-driven artificial intelligence (AI), and inverse problems and generative AI for improving biomedical imaging with a focus on MRI. A pioneer in his field of computational imaging and MR, he has made contributions that are significant in their transformative impact in how one can look inside the human body and brain. His work towards increasing image resolution and reducing exam times, two pivotal points to almost all MR applications, has been influential. 

Traditional MRI scans often require patients to lie still for long periods to capture clear images, but Akçakaya’s breakthrough methods tackle this challenge by teaching computers to reconstruct high-quality medical images from fewer raw data. One of his landmark AI methods, known as robust artificial-neural-networks for k-space interpolation (RAKI), uniquely trains itself on just a single patient's scan in real time rather than relying on massive, generalized databases, ensuring the technology is perfectly tailored to the individual being scanned. Building on this success, his research team subsequently developed a cutting-edge technique called self-supervised learning via data undersampling (SSDU), which allows AI to learn how to reconstruct MR images without access to reference data, while adhering to MR physics. This innovation has drastically accelerated imaging for a multitude of practical scenarios, even when perfect "textbook" comparison images are not available for training, earning prestigious global accolades. Notably, this work led Akçakaya’s doctoral student (and now alumnus) Burhaneddin Yaman to win the 2023 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award, alongside top university honors. Backed by over 30 patents, some of which are already licensed by major medical imaging companies, Akçakaya’s research is actively helping the future of fast, precise, and patient-friendly healthcare.

Apart from his research contributions, Akçakaya has been an active member of the ISMRM community. He is the founding chair of the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) Study Group of the ISMRM. He has also served on several ISMRM committees including the Young Investigator Award Committee, Scientific Program Committee, and the Organizing Committee of the ISMRM Workshop on Machine Learning, as well as session chairs for several Society meetings.

Akçakaya is the recipient of an NIH K99/R00 award (2012/15 respectively), an NSF CAREER award (2017), an NIH NIBIB Trailblazer Award (2020) and multiple NIH R01 Awards. He was elected as an ISMRM Junior Fellow in 2013. He is also the recipient of the University of Minnesota’s McKnight Land-Grant professorship (2018) and the Guillermo E. Borja Award (2020) awarded by the College of Science and Engineering. 

Professor Mehmet Akçakaya earned his bachelor's degree in engineering from McGill University in 2005, and his master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard University in 2010.