Dr. Karen Briley-Saebo received her PhD in Medical Physics from the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 2004. She worked 15 years in the pharmaceutical industry (Amersham/GE Health Care, Olso, Norway) on the development and testing of novel diagnostic imaging agents. She has been involved in all aspects of contrast agent design including exploratory work, pre-clinical efficacy testing, and Phase I clinical trials. She currently holds 7 patents related to design and use of contrast agents for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Dr. Briley-Saebo joined TMII in 2005 and was promoted to Instructor in 2008 (Radiology). She was also awarded a secondary appointment in the Department of Gene and Molecular Medicine at this time.  In addition to heading the Departmental Cell Tracking core facility, Dr. Briley-Saebo is committed to the development of clinically translatable molecular imaging probes for the detection of atherosclerotic plaque. She is also investigating the potential of vaccine/cell based therapeutics for treatment of a variety of diseases (inflammatory, HIV, lupus, and cancer).