Drum Roll … The Winners of 2025’s Barry L. Zaret Young Investigator Awards Competition

At last week’s Barry L. Zaret Young Investigator Awards Competition, 6 early-career investigators presented their research and took questions from the judges. ASNC Past President Robert C. Hendel, MD, MASNC, who moderated the session, praised the diversity of the finalists’ research topics and commented on the significance of having competitors from around the world. “The future of nuclear cardiology is indeed bright,” Dr. Hendel said.

Meet the winners of the competition were announced in the Sunday morning plenary session: 

The winners of the ASNC2025 Barry L. Zaret Young Investigator Awards Competition. From left: Maria Alwan, MD, and Min Ju.

The award for Best Clinical Abstract went to Maria Alwan, MD, of Houston Methodist Hospital, for her work, “Zero Plus: The Untold Story of a Coronary Artery Calcium Score (CACS) of Zero-Prevalence, Predictors, and Outcomes of Impaired Myocardial Flow Reserve Among Symptomatic Patients with a CACS of Zero”; and

The award for Best Emerging Science Abstract was presented to Min Ju, a graduate student at Fuwai Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, and Peking Union Medical College, for “First-in-Human Study of a Novel Cardiac Sympathetic Neuronal PET Imaging Agent: [18F]FPMBBG.”

Explore all the abstracts presented at ASNC2025 in the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology supplement, which will be available to all through Sept. 25.

ASNC2025 Abstracts