Aurora Imaging Technology, Inc. Advisory Board

The Story of SERENDIPITY, or YUAN():
Formation of Aurora Scientific Advisory Board

Da Hsuan Feng

Senior Executive Vice President
National Cheng Kung University

Dr. Kamilia F. Kozlowski, President of Aurora Breast MRI society,
Ms. Olivia Chang, CEO of Aurora Imaging Technology,
Lieutenant General (retired) Ron Blanck,
Major General (retired) Nancy Adams,
Dr. Steve Harms,

Distinguished Members of the Society,

Thank you so much for inviting me to speak to you at your annual meeting here in sunny Newport Beach, California. Since members of the Society consist of distinguished radiologists, breast surgeons and medical technologists all across the United States, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital of Harvard University to the University of California Irvine School of Medicine, and from Italy to Taiwan, this is indeed a great honor for both myself and for the University I represent, the National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan.

As a university administrator, I cannot think of anything more important and relevant then to have the opportunity to be in contact with people who on a daily basis deal with grand scale human suffering and to use their knowledge and wisdom to mitigate them. You are those people!

I would also like you to know that in my speech, you will not learn anything from me about this horrible disease. In the past day and a half, you have already heard many excellent and detailed presentations on how the disease can be detected and treated — from MRI imaging to onco-plastic surgery. You must be totally exhausted. So, what I would like you to do for the next 20 minutes or so is to take a deep breath, sit back, relax and allow me to take you on a fascinating journey of how the Scientific Advisory Board of Aurora was formed!

Ronald Blanck, Lieutenant General (retired) of US Army and
Nancy Adams, Major General (retired) of US Army

I am very honored to share the stage with two advisors who are both Army Generals as well as outstanding healthcare professionals: you just heard the two of them speak so eloquently.

Ron is the former Army Surgeon General and Nancy is the highest ranking woman in the Army medical Corp. As an incurable mathematician, I cannot help but notice that with Ron’s 3 stars and Nancy’s 2 stars, the average amount of stars for the three of us is 1.66 stars, which is slightly above a Brigadier General!

Ron and I became good friends when he was the President of the University of North Texas Health Science Center and I was Vice President for Research and Economic Development of UT Dallas. During those few years, we collaborated on a number of projects.

The Story of YUAN, or ,

The story of my association, and indeed the association of all the members of the scientific advisors of Aurora, can be summed up in one Chinese word, and it is , pronounced “Yuan.” The closest translation I could come up with is “serendipity,” with a little Buddist “meant to be” thrown in.

The first “yuan” occurred when I met Olivia in October of 2006. On that evening, I was entertaining a bunch of friends from Mainland China for dinner in a Chinese restaurant. For that occasion, I invited my good friend John Lau who asked me if he could bring with him a friend who was staying at his house for the day. I agreed, and that friend turned out to be Olivia. As a true professional, Olivia handed me her business card, and on it read MRI! And that did it for me!

One truly remarkable YUAN is NCKU, my home now, and the hometown of Olivia. She grew up in a house that is literally a stone’s throw away from NCKU! You can sense that the slightest change in the logistics of that day would mean I would not be standing here today.

Nobel laureates in medicine in 2003

As a physicist, I cannot be prouder then to note that two of my fellow physicists who invented the MRI, without which we would not be here today, are discussing how to mitigate this disease. They are Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham in UK and Peter Lauterber of the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana.

Allow me to quote what Sir Peter said during the Nobel banquet:

“...But there is another, darker side to our work. This side is expressed in the suffering and mental anguish associated with those afflicted with devastating illness. It is therefore all the more rewarding for us when someone takes a moment to write thanking us for the peace of mind felt by them in revealing their problem through MRI. In many cases accurate diagnosis together with surgical and/or drug intervention indicates a brighter future beyond the illness...”

These are elegant words. In fact, the essence of what he said has been embedded directly or indirectly in nearly all the talks over the past day and a half — from Olivia’s opening statement to the last talk by the onco-plastic surgeon, Dr. Gail Lebovic. To me, it is indeed remarkable and gratifying to see that a fellow physicist could feel so deeply about his work, and about how it could affect humanity. This indeed is a lesson for all to emulate.

There is another “YUAN” here about Sir Peter. I am so pleased that my good friend and mentor, Academician Fujia Yang, whom I had the pleasure of seeing when we were both visiting the Niels Bohr Institute in the late 1970’s, is now the Chancellor of Nottingham University, making him the first Chinese person ever to assume such a prestigious and high position at a research university in the United Kingdom. Nottingham University happens to be the home of Sir Peter Mansfield!

Aaron Ciechanover, Nobel laureate 2004, Chemistry

I met Aaron quite by accident. Another YUAN!

Aaron is a 2004 Nobel laureate in chemistry, “...for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation.”

He is of course a world renowned cancer researcher. In January of 2006, in my capacity as the Vice President for Research and Economic Development of the University of Texas at Dallas, I was invited to speak about interdisciplinary research at the conference of the Association of Anatomy, Cell Biology and Neurobiology Chairpersons (AACBNC) by the chair of that Association, my good friend Steve Goodman. I have to admit that the fact that the conference was held in Aruba, in January, was one of the draws! Not surprisingly, one of the keynote speakers was Aaron Ciechanover. During those three days in Aruba, Aaron and I became acquainted, and a number of subsequent, exciting events have taken place since then. One, which should be discussed at another time and another event, was our trip to Kaifeng, China to track down the lost Jewish tribe in the 7th - 10th century! Another is that we both became members of the Scientific Advisory Board of Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics (BCCBP) of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Interestingly, another member of the Board, Dr. R. J. Sung, a well known cardiologist is the former Dean of the College of Medicine of NCKU, my current home! The world is full of YUAN and is indeed very small!

Also, another important event took place before the first BCCBP Scientific Advisory Board meeting in May of 2007. Prior to us entering China, myself, Aaron, Olivia and myself were invited by President Paul Ching-Wu Chu to visit his University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. It was the first meeting between Aaron and Olivia, and naturally, Olivia took the opportunity to explain Aurora’s work to him. I believe that the interaction with Olivia was the reason why Aaron joined the Aurora’s Advisory Board.

Although Aaron is both an M.D. and Ph.D, he is certainly not your average doctor. He first went to Hebrew University School of Medicine and became a surgeon. He then practiced for six or seven years as an army surgeon. This must have given him ample opportunities to observe human suffering, either man made or natural. Then, instead of pursuing a great surgical career and becoming incredibly rich, Aaron decided to go back to his first love, which was scientific research. So, the Ph.D. came much, much later and the rest, as the cliché says, is history.

SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, MRI AND PAUL CHU

Paul Chu is a world renowned physics researcher. His claim to international fame was in 1987, when, while at the University of Houston, he, Maw-Kuan Wu of the University of Alabama at Huntsville and their students announced to the world their discovery of a high temperature superconductivity material about the boiling point of liquid nitrogen temperature (77 K,) one of the most important milestones in the search for high temperature superconductivity.

Let me give you a brief summary of honors Paul has received since 1987. He is a laureate of US National Medal of Science and the International Prize for New Materials. He was an invited contributor to the White House National Millennium Time Capsule at the National Archives in 2000 and was selected the Best Researcher in the US by US News and World Report in 1990. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences (foreign member), Academia Sinica, Russian Academy of Engineering, and the Third World Academy of Sciences. And as I mentioned earlier, in 2002, he also assumed the Presidency of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Now, what is the YUAN here?

First, Paul and I were both program directors at the National Science Foundation in Washington D.C. in the mid-eighties. Second, immediately after his epoch making discovery, I invited him to give a talk in Philadelphia. The talk was attended by more then 1000 people, from as far north as Albany, New York. The most remarkable thing about his talk that day was when, at the exact moment he said that “90 degree Kelvin was achieved,” it was followed by one of the biggest thunder cracks I have ever heard in my life. It was indeed a heart-stopping moment.

Third, Paul did his undergraduate studies in NCKU, my home now! Unquestionably, among the 120,000 highly successful alumni of NCKU, he is probably one of the most, if not the most, visible one. To say that NCKU is proud of Paul is truly an understatement! What YUAN!

The Physics of MRI

As an incurable teacher, I would be remiss if I did not take this opportunity to say a few words about the physics of MRI. We all know that the modern era of scientific methodology began around the time of Sir Isaac Newton, who was born in 1642. As a Chinese man, I find it interesting that two years later, in 1644, the last and most closed dynasty of China, Qing, began. Hence, while the West began its glorious journey of modern enlightenment, China slid downwards scientifically and technologically for nearly 300 years. I think anyone with the slightest understanding of science would know that

F = ma

is almost a cliché of Newtonian mechanics.

By the time the 19th century rolled around, scientific discoveries were maturing at a fast pace. One of the most remarkable (some even say divinely inspired) discoveries was the complete understanding of electromagnetics by a person who lived only 48 short years. His name was Sir James Clark Maxwell, who lived from 1831-1879. The icon he discovered now bears his name, which is Maxwell equations: For those of you who do not remember your differential equations or the physics courses you took when you were a student, just be assured that these four equations provided a complete understanding of the relationship between electric and magnetic fields. In many ways, Maxwell equations to me are akin to a glorious Beethoven symphony. While most of us do not and could not write symphonies, we certainly know how glorious they are when we hear them.

By the 20th century, there were two major intellectual breakthroughs in physics. The first is that when one approaches the speed of light, which is 299,792,458 meters per second, Newtonian mechanics are no longer operative. The second is that when one reaches atomic and molecular levels, again Newtonian mechanics are no longer operative. The former needs Einstein’s relativistic mechanics and the latter needs quantum mechanics.

Now, if you throw quantum mechanics and relativistic mechanics together, you will come up with the unbelievable concept called “spin” of the proton (or neutron) and it is how this spin moves in a magnetic field that the entire field of MRI was discovered!

To make a very long and complicated story short and sweet, I would just say that these two major intellectual breakthroughs in the 20th century are what give rise to “nuclear magnetic resonance.” Since “nuclear” is politically incorrect, the term is altered to “magnetic resonance imaging,” or MRI!

Now in order to make the image as clear as possible, one needs to place the subject matter, or in this case the human body, in a very strong magnetic field. The field strength should be a few tesla (1 tesla is 10,000 gauss, which is a pretty strong field). Again, to make a long story simple, the magnetic field is generated by electric currents, and strong fields require strong electric currents, which generate a lot of heat because of resistance in the standard wire. To reduce heat generation, it is best to submerge the electric wire in a very cold bath because it was discovered throughout the 20th century that at nearly absolute zero Kelvin temperature, resistance in wires can disappear. Without resistance, there is no heat. Hence, superconductivity! So you see how important it is for Aurora to have a world expert in superconductivity as a member of its Scientific Advisory Board. Hence Paul!

Russell Hulse, Nobel laureate 1993, Physics

Russell Hulse is a 1993 Nobel laureate in Physics, “... for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation.” He is an expert in data mining. I have known Russell ever since he was awarded the Nobel prize. For more then a decade, I was interested to lure him away from Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to join the University I was associated with (first at Drexel University in Philadelphia and later at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007). After nearly 14 years of effort, it finally happened. Russell resigned formally from Princeton and became the Regental Professor of the University of Texas at Dallas. In a nutshell, for Russell, the discovery of the binary pulsar, which is a system of two pulsars dancing around each other, meant essentially looking for “a needle in a haystack.”

Research in binary pulsar needs:

  • gut level understanding of scientific methodology;
  • to be computationally intensive;
  • an extreme form of data-mining (looking for event which is unexpected);
  • an extraordinary understanding of many systems put together (or system integration);
  • someone like Russell who is extremely well trained in all the above.

Well, in the fall of 2007, I convinced Russell to visit Aurora’s headquarters in North Andover, Massachusetts. See the enclosed picture of him with the Aurora crowd. What he saw and realized from his visit was the following: since data generated from Aurora facilities worldwide has the same protocol, Hulse can and is deeply interested in “outcome analysis” of Aurora global data, namely leveraging a highly sophisticated data-mining process to seek correlations between seemingly uncorrelated data!

Hence, joining the Advisory Board becomes a no-brainer!

Some Final Comments

In the past two days, I heard many speeches about how, with Aurora’s machine, one could “see” the menacing disease lurking in women’s breasts. Such capabilities, I sense, are giving women who had, or would have had this terrible disease a great deal of hope and comfort, because this machine could detect the disease as early as possible.

Nearly half a million women die of breast cancer annually. As the CEO of Aurora Imaging Technology, Ms. Olivia Cheng has stated, “what is keeping me up in the middle of most nights is the thought that millions and millions of women are suffering with this horrible disease in all corners of the globe. If the applications of Aurora technology can reduce this number, and eventually be responsible for eliminating it altogether, it would certainly make building such a company, no matter how arduous, a truly worthwhile endeavor.”

In my mind, here are some final thoughts about Aurora:

  • This is a perfect example of integrating clinical knowledge with engineering, GLOBALLY, to fight a horrible disease!
  • This is a perfect example of system integration, a term now very popular in modern 21st century engineering education. For Aurora, this is an archetypical example of a “small company doing big things.”
  • This is an excellent example of a medical device that can “do good while doing well!” Indeed, medical imaging will allow the physicians, radiologists and surgeons alike to “see” the disease, thereby rendering better treatments.
  • This is a perfect example of how to encourage other people to follow this path to create more medical devices and to enhance the quality of life for all humanity.

Thus, I am confident that bringing together a truly talented group of individuals like the members of the Aurora Scientific Advisory Board will help accelerate the mission of Aurora, which is to pool talents from universities and industries in order to produce highly efficient systems through system integration, both upstream, namely an idea and a vision and downstream, namely a real device which can be placed in clinicians hands to mitigate patient suffering.

Thank you so much for your attention.