Curriculum Vitae

MRI Physicist

I’m currently a Research Associate with the NeuroPoly research group at Polytechnique Montréal, where I build and maintain open-source scientific software for medical imaging. Day to day that means Python and MATLAB, plus git, continuous integration, Docker, and the occasional AWS deployment. I engineer the software around research tools like AxonDeepSeg and qMRLab — packaging, testing, releases, cross-platform compatibility — everything that makes a research model usable by researchers in other fields. Before the software side I spent most of my career in MRI physics as a researcher, and I still write pulse sequences and run acquisitions on animal and clinical scanners. I work in English and French, and I’ve worked remotely since 2015.

Mathieu Boudreau in McGill doctoral regalia, standing at the door of
the scanner suite at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, the 3 T MRI
visible through the window behind him. — PhD convocation, McGill, May 2018. Outside the 3 T MRI scanner at the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre of the Montreal Neurological Institute, where the thesis data was collected.

Professional experience

Research Associate — NeuroPoly Research Group, Polytechnique Montréal 2022 – present. Lead maintainer of AxonDeepSeg and qMRLab. Led the reliability analysis of a three-year longitudinal quantitative-MRI dataset and delivered it as a reproducible, containerized report.
Research Fellow — Montreal Heart Institute 2018 – 2022. Led the ISMRM T₁-mapping reproducibility challenge across 27 imaging sites and three scanner vendors. Implemented quantitative-MRI fitting methods in qMRLab and authored the T₁-mapping chapter of Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (opens in a new tab) (Elsevier, 2020).
Research Software Developer — CHU Sainte-Justine, Université de Montréal 2021 – 2022, part-time. Debugged, optimized and hardened a medical-imaging pipeline run across more than 40,000 UK Biobank subjects on the Niagara supercomputer, then analysed the results. SLURM job arrays and containerized workflows.
Graduate Research Assistant — McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute 2011 – 2018. Doctoral research on quantitative magnetization transfer under B₁ inhomogeneity. Pulse-sequence programming (Siemens IDEA, C++), scanner operation, and Bloch simulations.
Graduate Research Assistant — John P. Robarts Research Institute 2009 – 2011. Hyperpolarized-gas diffusion MRI of emphysema on a custom-built 73.5 mT small-animal system.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Biomedical Engineering — McGill University, May 2018 Supervisor: G. Bruce Pike, PhD. Thesis: “Robust Quantitative Magnetization Transfer Magnetic Resonance Imaging in the Presence of Radiofrequency Field Inhomogeneities (opens in a new tab).” PDF, 165 pages (opens in a new tab)
Master of Science, Physics — University of Western Ontario, October 2011 Supervisor: Giles E. Santyr, PhD, FCCPM. Thesis: “Hyperpolarized ¹²⁹Xe Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Anisotropy in an Elastase Instilled Rat Model of Emphysema (opens in a new tab).” PDF, 108 pages (opens in a new tab)
Bachelor of Science, Physics — Université de Moncton, May 2009

Selected recognitions and scholarships

Top Cited and Top Viewed Article — Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (Wiley), 2025 “Repeat it without me: Crowdsourcing the T₁ mapping common ground via the ISMRM reproducibility challenge (opens in a new tab)” was among the ten most-cited papers the journal published in 2024, and in the top 10% by views at twelve months.
Michael S. Patterson Publication Impact Prize (opens in a new tab) — Canadian Organization of Medical Physicists (COMP), 2024 Awarded to the most-cited paper (Web of Science) by a COMP member over the preceding decade, for work performed primarily at a Canadian institution. Co-author of the recognized paper, “On the Accuracy of T1 Mapping: Searching for Common Ground” (Magn Reson Med, 2015).
Annual Meeting Program Committee selection — ISMRM, 2023 “Phantom Results of the ISMRM Joint RRSG-qMRSG Reproducibility Challenge on T₁ mapping” was given a traditional poster board in a section reserved for the 100 works the committee selected to highlight at the meeting.
Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship (CGS D) — NSERC (opens in a new tab), 2012 NSERC’s doctoral award for high-calibre scholars in the natural sciences and engineering.
Biomedical Engineering PhD Recruitment Award (opens in a new tab) — McGill University, 2011 Awarded to attract top students into master’s or doctoral study with a primary supervisor in Biomedical Engineering at McGill.
Lillian Margaret and Walter David Jackson Scholarship in Physics (opens in a new tab) University of Western Ontario, 2010. Awarded annually for academic excellence to the graduate student with the highest standing in Physics. Endowed by J. D. Jackson — author of Classical Electrodynamics — in memory of his parents.

Editorial and community

Deputy Editor, Scientific Outreach — Editorial Board, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2020 – 2025
Lead Editor — MRM Highlights, International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2019 – 2025
MRM Highlights Contributor — International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 2015 – 2025 Conducted interviews with scientists about recent advancements in MRI research; transcribed and edited interviews into written articles.
Challenge Leader — Reproducible Research and Quantitative MR Study Groups Challenge, ISMRM, 2020
Organizer — MRathon: A hackathon for MRI professionals, 2019, 2023 – 2025
Peer review Over 50 manuscripts reviewed for:
- Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- NMR in Biomedicine
- NeuroImage
- Imaging Neuroscience
- Journal of Open Source Software
- IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging
- Translational Psychiatry

Teaching and supervision

Teaching assistant and marker, first-year physics labs — Université de Moncton Three years during my undergraduate degree, in French.
Lead author and editor — Quantitative MRI mOOC First of seven authors and first of five editors on a free open course covering T₁, T₂, B₁ and B₀ mapping and magnetization transfer, published through NeuroLibre under CC BY 4.0.
Undergraduate research supervision — Robarts Research Institute Elaine Hegarty, 2010 – 2011: hyperpolarized ¹²⁹Xe measurement of alveolar oxygen partial pressure at 73.5 mT.
Graduate mentoring — Skopje Kiril Zelenkovski and Filip Velkov, 2020 – 2023, on reproducible research notebooks for NeuroLibre.
Teaching assistant, Physics — University of Western Ontario 2009 – 2011. Completed Western’s Teaching Assistant Training Program, 2009.

Technical skills

Python, MATLAB, C, C++, shell, HTML and CSS. Docker and Singularity, HPC (SLURM), continuous integration, git. NumPy, pandas, PyTorch, TensorFlow, scikit-learn. LLMs, Claude Code, MCP servers. English and French.