van Dam Laboratory

UCLA Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging

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Welcome

Welcome to the website of the van Dam research group in the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging and Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at UCLA. Our group, led by Prof. R. Michael van Dam, focuses on the development of microfluidic technologies and automated systems for radiopharmaceutical synthesis and development, as well as high-throughput synthesis and analysis platforms with applications in cancer research and molecular imaging. 

Our research

Much of our current work is focused on development of technologies to improve the development and production of radiopharmaceuticals, including imaging tracers and targeted radiotherapeutics (Figure 1).  

More details of these and other projects can be found on our Research page, and in our Publications and Patents.

Overview of PET tracer production workflow and role of microfluidic chips

Figure 1: Workflow of positron emission tomography (PET) illustrating the conventional equipment for producing PET radiotracers and the role of emerging microfluidic chemical synthesis technologies in this process.

Our team

Our group comprises talented individuals from a variety of fields with a common passion to build technologies to accelerate medical discoveries and help propel them into practical use.

Group Photo, October 4, 2024

(Left to Right: Michael van Dam, Jeff Collins, Colin Choudhary, Weiting Deng, Yingqing "Joanne" Lu, Rajib Sarker)