On behalf of myself and the SMRT Board, we would like to welcome you to this year’s 26th Annual Meeting in the beautiful city of Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA. It’s very exciting to be returning to the beautiful Hawai’i Convention Center located just steps from the beautiful beaches of Waikiki. We hope you can join us for an exciting event of First Class clinical & research educational material presented by some of the most amazing MR Technologists, Radiographers and Physicians from around the world. Many special events are planned, including time to network with your friends and colleagues at our social events; a reception on Friday evening and another unforgettable event on Saturday evening at the SMRT Welcome Reception being held at Sky Waikiki, with more details to follow on the website. The ISMRM & SMRT is in the final stages of planning a charity Fun Run event for early Sunday morning well before the start of our meeting. Start your training now and plan to bring your running shoes!

For the first time in the history of the SMRT there is now an option of a three-day meeting with an additional 7.25 category A CE credits available. The ISMRM was generous enough to work with the SMRT Program Committee, allowing us to develop courses specific to Radiographers and Technologists to now provide a total of 19.5 Category A CE Credits for the three days. Our Program Chair, Shawna Farquharson and the Annual Meeting Planning Committee have been hard at work developing an extraordinary program. The planning is finally complete and all speakers are confirmed. The final program is listed on the SMRT website. This year the Educational Awards Ceremony will be held Friday evening 21 April, immediately following the poster tour and presentations. The John A Koveleski Award winning abstract will be presented during the poster tour on Friday evening along with the First, Second and Third place Clinical and Research posters. You won’t want to miss these exceptional research presentations.

In addition to the poster winners, the SMRT Abstract Committee has also selected seven outstanding abstracts for oral presentation during the meeting. The President’s Award and First Place Clinical and Research Award proffered papers will be presented on Saturday afternoon. The Second and Third Place Clinical and Research proffered papers will be presented on Sunday afternoon.

Once again the SMRT will live Stream the meeting this year via our Virtual Meeting, allowing Radiographers and Technologists the opportunity to sit in the comfort of their own home or enjoy getting together with other colleagues and watch the Annual Meeting live. It will also give them the opportunity to participate in the meeting as if they were actually there and includes the ability to ask questions of the speakers and chat live with others taking part in the live stream. This year multiple different registration options will be available. Because you will be viewing the meeting live and your participation will need to be verified, there will be no need to take a post-test to obtain credits. If you register for the Virtual Meeting and the timing of the meeting isn’t convenient for you, you will still be allowed to receive credits by viewing the sessions on-demand.

Mark Griswold, Ph.D. will open the meeting on Saturday as our Keynote speaker, presenting on MRI: From the Past to the Present World of MRI Fingerprinting. This year we will continue the breakout sessions, offering forums on MR Management, MRI Theory: From the Fundamentals to Advanced Imaging Applications, PET MR & MSK Imaging.

Just before lunch on Saturday will be the SMRT annual Business Meeting & Passing of the Gavel. Please join us for the annual Business Meeting. This is a great way to learn all about what the SMRT has accomplished over the past year and what our plans are for future years. The passing of the Gavel to an amazing, well deserving woman, Titti Owman,(R)(CT)(MR), FSMRT, SMRT President-Elect will be an absolute honor. She has worked very closely with me this year and will do an amazing job of continuing the SMRT vision for the next year. I can’t believe my term as your SMRT President is coming to an end. I can honestly say this has been the highlight of my career and an absolute honor to serve as SMRT President. I want to thank the Policy Board, Committee Chairs and all the Committee Members for all their help and support. I couldn’t ask for a better group to work with and especially through the first year of our Governance restructure. The restructure was some serious change for everyone and I have to say that everyone involved pulled it off without a glitch.

A special thank you to the On-Line Learning Committee that has spent an exorbitant amount of time and has finally completed categorizing all the years of the SMRT Educational material. A redesign of the SMRT website will now allow us the opportunity to group over twenty-five years of our educational content into specific categories and finally allow non-members full access to purchase our superior educational material but as always this content will remain free to our members. The new Learning Management Software (LMS) – will be available in February. This second phase will further integrate the LMS with SMRT’s Association Management Software (AMS). This phase will include automated transfer of credits from the LMS into the SMRT AMS. It will revamp the current look of the LMS and the way it operates as it relates to online learning.

On behalf of the SMRT, I would like to express our sincere appreciation to our membership for their continued support of all of our efforts. Your commitment is incredibly generous in helping us meet and achieve our goals. Because of your support we are able to further our educational vision of being the leading resource for the global MR Radiographer and Technologist community. Talk to your colleagues, if they are not a member of this amazing organization, ask them why? The future of the SMRT is very bright and strong and anyone involved in MRI should be proud to be a part of it.

James J. Stuppino, B.S., R.T.(R)(MR)
SMRT President 2016-2017