The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is announcing a major, university-wide Strategic Hiring Initiative to hire six (6) full-time tenure-track and tenure faculty positions at all levels (Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Full Professor) for Leveraging 7T MRI for Brain Health and Precision Medicine that lies at the critical intersection of advanced imaging technology, imaging science, neuroscience, and health.
Ultrahigh Field MRI to Unlock next Generation of Brain Science
University of Illinois Researchers are leveraging a new 7 T human MRI system to develop the next generation of brain imaging technologies.
Join us to help lead into this new imaging frontier.
This major institutional investment, which spans across the Grainger College of Engineering, the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, the College of Applied Health Sciences, and Carle Illinois College of Medicine seeks to leverage local expertise in imaging and neuroscience, combined with institutional investments in MRI, including in the Beckman Institute Biomedical Imaging Center (BIC) and the Carle Illinois Advanced Imaging Center (CI AIC).
Participating Departments and Strategic Targets:
- Bioengineering (x2) – MR hardware (RF, pTx), new acquisition approaches, new applications of UHF
- Electrical and Computer Engineering – (job ad) RF coil design and testing, pTx, new acquisition approaches
- Psychology – leveraging advanced technology to further our understanding of the brain
- Health and Kinesiology – using increased sensitivity to track the impact of interventions on brain changes
- College of Medicine – pushing clinical imaging further to see pathology and measure progression and therapy
Cluter Hires to Date:
Andrew Webb
Andrew Webb will be joining the Bioengineering Department in summer of 2026. His research focus is on both ultra high field and establishing a low field MRI group at UIUC. He previously directed the highly successful Virtual Seven Tesla Institute (VISTA) consortium of five high field sites in the Netherlands, and directed the C.J.Gorter MRI Center at Leiden University.
Megan Huibregtse
Dr. Megan Huibregtse joined the Department of Health and Kinesiology in 2025. Dr. Huibregtse received her B.S. in Neuroscience in 2017 and her Ph.D. in Human Performance in 2022 from Indiana University. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Emory University School of Medicine. Dr. Huibregtse’s research interests include understanding how white matter microstructural damage, particularly in female patients, develops and resolves over time after traumatic brain injury and relates to functional outcomes, how co-occurring psychological trauma and brain injury affect brain structure and function, and how a history of traumatic brain injury contributes to changes in neural integrity across female reproductive aging.
Come join us!
