Researcher Wins Poster Competition at Annual Convention

Dr. Kenneth Hoyt, associate professor of bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, and his team of students and researchers recently presented eight abstracts at the American Institute for Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM) Annual Convention.

Among Hoyt’s group was Fangyuan Xiong, MD, a visiting scientist from the Department of Medical Ultrasound at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. In a field of over 100 scientists, Xiong was named winner of the poster competition at the convention.

Xiong’s poster, titled “Ultrasound-stimulated drug delivery of reconstituted high density lipoprotein (rHDL) nanoparticles loaded with an optical reporter,” details how new therapeutic strategies can improve treatment outcomes for breast cancer patients: Xiong and a group of researchers have conducted preclinical studies that demonstrated an ultrasound-stimulated drug delivery system.

“Another highlight from this convention is that it marked the beginning of my term as an elected member of the AIUM Technical Standards Committee,” Hoyt said. “In this position, I help develop standardized approaches to performing clinical measurements using ultrasound imaging systems.”

This year marks the third-time Hoyt has been elected to this committee whose current members are physicians or scientists from industry and academia. Hoyt also began his term as secretary of the AIUM Therapeutic Ultrasound Community, which focuses on advancing the efficiency and awareness of ultrasound applications for therapeutic benefit.

Hoyt is head of the Research in the Ultrasound Imaging and Therapy Laboratory in the Department of Bioengineering, which is focused broadly on the development and use of novel ultrasound technologies for detecting, monitoring and treating diseases such as cancer.

Hoyt attended Drexel University where he received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, a master’s in biomedical engineering and then a PhD in biomedical engineering. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Rochester, he moved to the Department of Radiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in 2008 where he was an associate professor until 2015. During his tenure in Birmingham, Hoyt also obtained an MBA degree from the UAB School of Business. In 2015, he relocated to Texas and joined the faculty in the Department of Bioengineering in the Jonsson School.