CIBM | Center for Biomedical Imaging

Erick J. Canales-Rodríguez is a senior researcher specializing in Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques, holding a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Havana, a Master’s from the University of Barcelona, and a PhD from the University of the Basque Country, Spain. His career began at the Cuban Neuroscience Center, where he developed methods for estimating brain connectivity using MRI, and continued at the FIDMAG Research Foundation in Spain, focusing on studying mental disorders. He was also a postdoctoral researcher at CHUV in Switzerland and an Ambizione fellow at EPFL, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research integrates physics, signal processing, computer science, and neuroscience to advance MRI techniques and their clinical applications. He has secured €1.3 million in research funding, led four major projects, and supervised over 15 students, including those at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD levels. He has an h-index of 41 with about 8,000 citations. In addition to his research, he plays an active role in the academic community, serving as a reviewer for international journals, holding editorial board positions, and co-organizing international workshops.

Dr. Canales-Rodríguez has published around 100 research articles in leading international journals and has received awards from institutions such as the Cuban Academy of Sciences, the Spanish Neuroimaging Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, and the Catalan Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health. He won two High Angular Resolution Diffusion Imaging Reconstruction Challenges at the IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI 2012, Barcelona, and ISBI 2013, San Francisco). Additionally, he is part of a team that won two international fibre tracking challenges: the ‘Macaque Challenge’ in the 3-D Validation of Tractography with Experimental MRI (3D VoTEM, IEEE-ISBI 2018, Washington D.C.) and the IronTrack Challenge 2019 at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention (MICCAI, Shenzhen).

Since September 2024 he has joined the Computational Imaging and Machine Learning section of the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM SP CHUV-EPFL) under the FNS project “Modeling the developing cortex: Advanced MRI techniques for next-generation biomarkers of the neonatal cortex” with PI Elda Fischi-Gomez.