Pavel Aleksandrovich Belov
Head of The International Research Centre for Nanophotonics and Metamaterials (St. Petersburg, Russia)                                                                   

Education
After finishing Saint Petersburg Lyceum 30, Pavel Belov graduated with honors from the ITMO University in 2000. He defended his PhD thesis twice: from ITMO University in Russia in 2003 with the thesis "Analytical modeling of electromagnetic crystals", and then in Finland in 2006 at the Helsinki University of Technology with the thesis "Analytical modeling of metamaterials and new principle of sub-wavelength imaging".[1] In November 2010 he received doctor of science degree for his thesis "Analytical modeling of electromagnetic crystals and left-handed materials".
Career
Dr. Belov has extensive experience of working abroad (Finland, South Korea, United Kingdom) with such industrial giants as Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Bosch. He is a member of the Council of young scientists and specialists of the ITMO University. He is also a member of IEEE, AP-S, ED-S, MTT-S, LEO-S (Laser and Electro-Optics Society, www.i-leos.org); URSI, SPIE scientific societies. Since October 2015, Dr Belov has been on the Board of Scientific Advisors at Metamaterial Technologies Inc., an international optical nano-composites company (www.metamaterial.com)
Awards
Dr. Pavel Belov is a laureate of the Russian Federation President's Prize in Science and Innovation for Young Scientists in 2009 (Presidential Decree No.139 of 4.02.2010). The prize is awarded for outstanding contributions to the physics of metamaterials and the development of devices for transmission and processing of superresolution images. He is the winner of grants for State Support of Young Russian Ph.D Scientists in 2005 and 2009. His other prizes include:
• IET Achievement Medal (IET, UK, 2006)
• International Dennis Gabor Award (NOVOFER Foundation, Hungary, 2003)
• URSI Young Scientist Award (Belgium, 2002)
Publications
Pavel Belov is the author of more than 260 scientific articles in refereed journals, 300 conference proceedings and 18 book chapters. His h-index is 61 (according WoS). His work has generated over 19 000 citations.  

Speech Title: Metamaterial-inspired and ceramic-based structures for clinical MRI applications

Abstract: The impact of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the medical world continues steadily to grow. The non-invasiveness, absence of ionizing radiation, and a broad range of functional information that can be gathered in vivo constantly open new horizons for the application of magnetic resonance (MR) in clinics. As a result, human MR examinations become highly specialized with a well-defined and often relatively small target in the body. The latter, while being very valuable for boosting the MRI specificity, often implies an intensive usage of the high peak radiofrequency (RF) powers since existing clinical MR equipment was initially designed to be universal that compromises its efficiency for a small target. Thus, advanced and valuable MR methods often cannot be (or only with a suboptimal performance) routinely applied in clinical MR studies.

This talk aims to overview the results in the field of using novel materials such as high permittivity ceramics, metamaterials, metasurfaces and artificial dielectrics for various MRI applications. The structures based on such novel concepts can be placed around the body for in vivo imaging, be integrated into a conventional RF coil, or be the resonator itself. Thus, it is possible to improve the quality of MRI scans. In particular, wireless coils based on metamaterial inspired structures electromagnetically couple to the body birdcage coil and can redistribute an electromagnetic field, focusing it in the region of interest. It improves locally transmit efficiency and receive sensitivity of the body coil, making it comparable with local receive arrays. The main advantages of such resonators are simplicity of the design (hence, robustness and ease of maintenance), absence of RF cables, and as a consequence, low cost. Moreover, these devices can be directly integrated and applied within any clinical MR scanner with no modifications to the scanner hardware.