Hernando won the award for his paper “Robust Water/Fat Separation in the Presence of Large Field Inhomogeneities Using a Graph Cut Algorithm” following a competition that culminated with a poster and oral presentation at the 17th Annual Scientific Meeting of the  ISMRM held in Hawaii in April. Hernando is a graduate student working on his Ph.D. in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois.

The award, named after Nobel Laureate Isidor I. Rabi, recognizes achievements in basic research in magnetic resonance, especially those involving new technical developments. Co-authors of the paper along with Hernando are Beckman faculty member Zhi-Pei Liang, fellow Liang research group member Justin Haldar, and Dr. Peter Kellman, staff scientist at the National Institutes of Health.