Dr Edoardo Pasca is the Head of the Computed Tomography and Imaging group at Scientific Computing of STFC. He is also the Project Lead for the Collaborative Computional Project in Tomopgraphic Imaging (CCPi), supporting the community with Chair Professor Philip Withers, University of Manchester.
He leads a team of scientists/developers who develop the Core Imaging Library, and support the UK community via CCPi and the national facilities. He also supports the CCP in Synergistic Reconstruction in Biomedical Imaging. He has a master in Physics, a PhD in Material Science and Technology, and he is Oracle Certified Professional. His interests are in image reconstruction for tomography and especially data interaction and visualisation.
CCPi aims to provide the UK tomography community with a toolbox of algorithms that increases the quality and level of information that can be extracted by computed tomography. It is led by a working group of experimental and theoretical academics with links to Diamond Light Source, ISIS and Industry.
Research Community Manager Alison Oliver talks to Dr Pasca about his career so far and his journey from physics to software and imaging and eventually working with CoSeC.
1. Your background is in physics, completing your first degree and PhD at the University of Florence. What was it that introduced you to physics as a discipline and what led you to study the field at university? What was the focus of your thesis?
I think I was always intrigued by understanding why things happened in the way they did. When I was little, I had a bike called a chopper, which sported a smaller radius wheel at the front and extended forks. It was very heavy and hard to manoeuvre, yet very handsome. At any rate I had noticed that the front wheel was spinning faster than the rear wheel. I thought that a Ferrari would run much faster if it had very big wheels, like a tractor!
I decided quite early in high school to pursue physics. I loved astronomy and was very interested in cosmology, but I remained open to whatever opportunities I could find. I ended up hating experimental astronomy, though with hindsight it’s like all experimental physics, but loved quantum mechanics and condensed matter theory.
For my PhD, I studied sensitive materials for bolometers. These are thermometers used at very low temperatures (a few hundreds of a degree above absolute zero) to measure the increase in temperature of a material when one particle deposits some (very little) energy in it. I worked on a massive experiment with literally thousands of bolometers in search of a forbidden (according to quantum mechanics) nuclear decay. In practice, we put a number on how improbable that decay was, and from that we gave an upper limit to the mass of the electronic neutrino. I selected the appropriate sensor and then had shifts running the experiment at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, an underground lab, like Boulby, shielded by 2000m of rock, reachable with a 5 km tunnel.
2. Following your PhD, you became a post doc at Leiden University. What research did you undertake whilst there?
I gained experience in low temperature physics, running dilution refrigerators, which are now used to cool quantum computers, and in studying material properties at low temperatures. I also studied molecular nano-magnets, which are arranged in 3D structures and depending on how they are arranged depending on the ratio of the lattice elastic forces to the magnetic forces, they exhibit different magnetic and thermal properties. These materials were studied for several types of applications, such as molecular memories, coolant, but mostly they provided the first evidence of quantum tunneling of magnetisation, a purely quantum effect which had never been observed.
3. You then moved onto be a physicist at Leiden Cryogenics and then returned to post- doctoral research at NKI. What led to this move?
At Leiden Cryogenics, I developed some powerful dilution refrigerator for the experiment I did my thesis with. However, at some point I had the chance to work at the NKI, the Dutch Cancer Institute, at an exciting project with Dr Philips Withers, who at the time was developing, in a race with other vendors, an integrated PET (Positron Emission Tomography) and MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). The machine was being developed on the wake of the PET/CT (X-ray computed tomography), which was a game changer machine in medical imaging and made PET a much more sensitive and useable device for clinical use.
Merging MRI with PET would have spared patients additional and unnecessary X-ray doses, as an MRI does not use ionising radiation. I decided to study pharmacokinetic models to understand how medicines spread in the body for both modalities and to understand how the two modalities could have worked in synergy. A Philips PET/MR never got built, but other vendors did produce PET/MR machines; however, they did not live up to expectation. It found niches of use, but it is much more complex, expensive to buy and to run. At UC for instance, it mostly got used just as PET/CT and is now being decommissioned.
4. Between 2012 and 2016, you were an independent entrepreneur in the Android App market. What led to this move and what are your memories when you look back on this time/or what skills and experience did you gain that would prove useful for your future career at STFC?
After NKI, I had transitioned from experimental physics to software development. For several reasons I moved back to Italy, and I started to develop apps for android with a friend. In this period, I learned to put myself in the shoes of the user of software and strived to simplify the user’s life, making it seamless. I learned to delegate and collaborate, and that users are probably the most important asset for a software project. It doesn’t really matter if your software does incredible things. If it’s not being used by anyone, then there is no point.
5. Please could you tell us what led to you to working at STFC?
With the android business, I did well at the beginning, but in the end, I entered the field a bit too late to be able to monetize on just app development. I started to look for different software developer positions in Italy and in Germany. I studied German and achieved B2 level and I had a remote interview all in German!
However, looking at the job posts I was submitting to, and at the interviewers, I felt that I wasn’t yet another software developer and that I didn’t want to build another e-commerce. I had the same interest in science and a strong background in physics which no one in the panels had. I looked at Diamond because a friend of mine worked there. STFC was looking for someone like me: a software developer who is also a scientist, or a Research Software Engineer, so I applied. They were looking at someone to work at tomographic imaging (medical with CCP-PETMR and non-medical with CCPi) and I got the job.
6. What led to CCPi starting?
CIL is the product of CCPi. When I joined in 2017, there was the need to develop a software for hyperspectral imaging which didn’t exist. Together with Jakob Jorgensen, a then-Manchester postdoc, we pitched the need for the software at the CCPi exec board and after they approved it, we started the development in 2018. It’s been a few years in the making, with contributions by several collaborators and colleagues. The first research outputs came out in 2021 with a flurry of 5 articles, two on hyperspectral imaging with X-rays and one with neutrons with the ISIS/IMAT beamline and one on synergistic PET/MR reconstruction together with SIRF, the CCP-SyneRBI software.
The work at NKI and with CCP-SyneRBI is outstanding. Currently, I’m working at a project with the NHS to assess some AI tools that have been appearing in their MRI scanners, which promise lots but which have posed some questions on features that may be AI hallucinations.
7. What has been the value that CoSeC has brought to CCP-Syne RBI?
CoSeC has helped us to create a community by funding our events and has allowed us to develop software which otherwise would not be available.
8. How would you encourage young people to get into physics and computing? What words of advice would you give someone hoping to make it into a career?
I think that physics is interesting. It may be hard but it is also fun. I believe that we fixate too much on how hard it may be, rather than how interesting it is. Coming from Italy, physics is not regarded so highly. If you studied engineering people would know you make things like cars, turbines, bridges and respect you, but if you did physics, what do you actually do? They wouldn’t know, it’s just hard and dry, they think. Here in the UK, it’s somehow the opposite! They respect you so much because you did something that’s so hard. I guess we should do better at communicating how interesting things in physics/computing really are. Nowadays, you have got some good role models and great communicators, such as David Attenborough, Brian Cox and Hannah Fry; and there are also a lot more channels for the dissemination of such efforts to large audiences. I loved being part of the Harwell Open Week!
To paraphrase President John F. Kennedy’s moon speech, why study STEM subjects? We choose to study STEM subjects not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. And it is also lots of fun!
9. What has been the most exciting development that you have worked on during your career?
I think it is the prospect of making changes in people’s lives. In this context the work at NKI and with CCP-SyneRBI is outstanding. Currently, I’m working at a project with the NHS to assess some AI tools that have been appearing in their MRI scanners, which promise lots but which have posed some questions on features that may be AI hallucinations.
10. What do you think the most important recent developments in the field have been? What do you think will be the most exciting and productive areas of research during the next few years?
During the next few years, we are going to face AI. It is going to be disruptive, for something very useful, for something else just hype. Science goes in fashions, there are waves. The AI one is looking to be gigantic, with government and funding agencies all committing to it. I don’t like this.
11. Who have been the people who have been influential in your career?
I think that Erica Wang, my first LM at STFC was the first one to fully support me and made me grow, and then Barbara Montanari. Erica left STFC only 9 months after I started which was a real setback for me. I had experienced a similar thing when my future at NKI ended with my line manager resigning. It’s been hard, but thanks to all the different experiences (mainly all the failures) I took all the chances I could at STFC and I built a group of 10 from the bottom up!
12. If you had not got involved in the field of software development, what do you think you would have done? (Is there another field that you could have seen yourself making an impact on?)
I’d like to think I’d have become an astrophysicist. Or maybe a professional musician (or better a rock star) rather than an amateur?