A Dynamic and Expert Team

Hugo Dorez is the founder of the HawkCell solution and the CSO and COO of the company.

He’s a passionate scientist who’s been working in the imaging field for a decade. As a PhD student in MRI physics at Université de Lyon, France, he carried out translational research between animals and humans, which led him to realize that MRI had the potential to transform preclinical research but required some modifications to fit animal morphology.

He spent 3 years strengthening his expertise and knowledge in MRI around 3 axes:

– MRI coils development for small animals and optical bench for fluorescence imaging on animals
– Post-processing algorithms for quantification of pathologies with T1 and T2 mapping, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, fractal analysis, graph analysis
– Expertise in MRI sequences development, protocol design, and MRI scans on Bruker, Siemens, and GE Healthcare platforms.

In 2018, Hugo partnered up with the Pulsalys incubator in France to develop a technology that would bring the power of MRI to animals, accelerating preclinical research and improving the general welfare of animals. After 2 years of development, HawkCell was born, and with it, the ambition to bring the best of human MRI to animals for veterinarians and preclinical research.

Hugo has published research articles throughout his Phd, among which:

Multimodal endoluminal MRI-optical imaging for in vivo characterisation and staging of colorectal tissue anomalies, 2016

Endoluminal high-resolution MR imaging protocol for colon walls analysis in a mouse model of colitis, 2016

Machine learning-based classification of the health state of mice colon in cancer study from confocal laser endomicroscopy, 2019

Hugo is the father of two little girls and living in Annecy next to the Alps. His motto in life is “don’t look back, you’re not going that way!”, a philosophy that keeps him moving forward, be it as part of the leadership team at HawkCell or in his passion for mountain biking and mountaineering.

Contact: hugo.dorez@hawkcell.com