Board of Directors

• Maxime Descoteaux
  President / Founder
  Professor, Université de Sherbrooke
  Bio Maxime Descoteaux, PhD, is a full Professor in Computer Science since 2009 at the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. He is the founder of the Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Laboratory and member of the College of the Royal Society of Canada. His research aims to develop novel tractography algorithms, validate them, and translate them to clinical applications.

• Laurent Petit
  Secretary / Founder
  Director of Research, CNRS, France
  Bio Laurent Petit joined CNRS in 1998, where he currently holds the position of Research Director within the Neurofunctional Imaging Group at the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CNRS CEA University of Bordeaux, France). His research program focuses on neuroanatomy and developing innovative strategies for studying the anatomy of the human brain’s white matter using diffusion imaging and tractography combined with ex vivo microscopic dissection data.

• Graham Little
  Treasurer / Founder
  CEO, Jump Ship Labs
  Bio Graham Little, PhD, is CEO at Jump Ship Labs, a co-founder of the International Society for Tractography (IST) and a NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the Université de Sherbrooke, Canada. Graham is interested in non-traditional methods for accelerating research. With the IST, Graham is framing the operational and organizational aspects of the society, to help it grow into a society that “gets things done” and truly facilitates international collaboration.

• Flavio Dell’Acqua
  Founding Board Member
  Reader/Associate Professor - King’s College London
  Bio Flavio Dell’Acqua is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Translational Neuroimaging at King’s College London and co-founder of the NatBrainLab. His research interest focuses on the development and application of advanced diffusion imaging methods to study the organisation and integrity of human brain connections during normal development and in the presence of neurological or psychiatric disorders.

• Alexander Leemans
  Founding Board Member
  Head of the PROVIDI Lab UMC Utrecht
  Bio Alexander Leemans holds a tenured faculty position as Associate Professor at the Image Sciences Institute (ISI), University Medical Center Utrecht, the Netherlands. His current research interests include modeling, processing, visualizing and analyzing diffusion MRI data for investigating microstructural and architectural tissue organization. He currently heads the PROVIDI Lab and is the developer of ExploreDTI, a graphical toolbox for investigating diffusion MRI data.

• Catherine Lebel
  Founding Board Member
  Professor, Radiology, University of Calgary
  Bio Catherine Lebel is a Professor of Radiology at the University of Calgary and a Canada Research Chair in Pediatric Neuroimaging. She leads the Child Brain & Mental Health Program at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute and is a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute. Her research uses MRI to study how brain structure and function change with age in typical children and those with neurodevelopmental disorders, including fetal alcohol spectrum disorder and learning disabilities.

The board was formed in 2023 to guide the early years of the International Society for Tractography. The board is reponsible for ensuring the organizational framework is in place for the society to successfully achieve its scientific mission.