R. Wanda Rowe , Ph.D.

Dr. Rowe is a physicist by training, who obtained her Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland through research on Single Photon Computed Tomography (SPECT), a now widespread nuclear medicine imaging technique. She was subsequently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM UK Scientific Research Centre, researching image reconstruction in medical ultrasound imaging, and at Brookhaven National Laboratory, performing quantitative SPECT imaging research. Her medical imaging experience broadened further when she spent three years developing an ophthalmic imaging system and associated image processing techniques at North Shore University Hospital, a teaching hospital of Cornell University. In 1986, she moved to Texas to join the faculty in the Positron Diagnostic & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, where she carried out research into methods of improving the accuracy of Positron Emission Tomographic (PET) imaging. In the course of studying the ability of PET to monitor response to cancer therapy, she began what became a long-standing collaboration with Dr. Joan Bull, Director of the Hyperthermia Laboratory. In 1991, Dr. Rowe formally joined the Division of Oncology and became a member of the Hyperthermia Laboratory. Following on an investigation of the effect of immune stimulators on tumor PET imaging, Dr. Rowe's research continued with studies of the induction of different types of cell death by hyperthermia combined with chemotherapy, the hyperthermic enhancement of liposome delivery to tumors, the relationship of microvasculature development during tumor growth to metastatic invasion, and modeling of tumor growth. She performs most of the data analysis for the hyperthermia laboratory, as well as assisting with experimental design, technical writing, and information technology. Dr. Rowe is an author of 23 peer reviewed scientific publications as well as many abstracts and scientific presentations. She teaches in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and is also an occasional reviewer of grants and papers, a scientific consultant, and a science fair judge. For many years a member of the Society for Nuclear Medicine, Dr. Rowe is currently a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the South Texas Chapter of the Health Physics Society.