Lawrence L. Wald, Ph.D., received his undergraduate training in Physics at Rice University, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1992 under the direction of Prof. E.L. Hahn with a thesis related to optical detection of NMR. He obtained further (postdoctoral) training in Physics at Berkeley and then in Radiology and MRI at the University of California at San Francisco, where he worked on MR spectroscopic imaging of brain tumors and the development of phased array coils for high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy with Drs. Vigneron and Nelson. He began his academic career as an Instructor at the Harvard Medical School in the Brain Imaging Center of McLean Hospital and, since 1998, at the Massachusetts General Hospital Dept. of Radiology in the NMR Center (now the A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging). He is currently a Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and Affiliated Faculty of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences Technology and the Harvard Biophysics program.

He is the Director of the MGH’s Core imaging facility at the MGH Martinos Center, which puts him in close contact with a diverse set of clinical and basic scientists. His research interests focus on MR methodology for high-field brain imaging. He is an author of >350 publications and has >60 issued patents. Recent work has developed highly parallel detection and its application to highly accelerated image encoding and parallel excitation, ultra-high field MRI (7 Tesla) methodology for brain imaging, improved gradient coils and methods for studying the Human Connectome, portable MRI technology, and magnetic particle resonance for functional brain imaging. Dr. Wald enjoys an active role in educational programs at MGH and MIT and through the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM), the Organization of Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) and the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA.) He is a Fellow and gold medal awardee of the ISMRM where he served as president 2019-20 and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biologial Engineering (AIMBE), Americal Physical Society (APS) and a member of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).