Two Illinois faculty members are beginning new leadership roles within the university’s magnetic resonance imaging research community.

Brad Sutton, a Founder Professor in Bioengineering, became the director of Beckman’s Biomedical Imaging Center on June 15. And beginning August 15, pending execution of a final memorandum of understanding, Andrew Webb, a professor of bioengineering, will become co-director of the Carle Illinois Advanced Imaging Center. The Beckman Institute will confirm the appointment once the agreement is finalized.

“I’m thrilled that Brad and Andrew will continue to foster neuroimaging initiatives and pushing the boundaries of MRI at Illinois,” said Beckman Director Steve Maren.

Sutton has a long history with BIC, beginning his Illinois career as a 3 Tesla MRI research scientist at the center in 2003. He later became a bioengineering faculty member and returned to BIC as its technical director in 2014.

“It is an exciting time to be doing biomedical imaging at Illinois and I am honored to lead this world-class imaging facility at the center of it,” Sutton said. “We have an innovative and interdisciplinary set of faculty who are rapidly advancing the technology and its applications and I am looking forward to helping to increase our impact on campus and globally.”

BIC develops cutting-edge techniques in MRI. It provides facilities, equipment, training and expertise for researchers across a range of disciplines conducting imaging studies on materials, animals and humans to better understand physiology and disease.

Webb returned to Illinois in June 2026 after serving as professor and director of the Gorter Center in the Department of Radiology at Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands since 2008. Before that, he served as a faculty member in the Illinois Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He will co-direct the Carle Illinois Advanced Imaging Center with Bruce Damon, Carle Health’s director of clinical imaging research.

The center is a collaborative effort between Beckman and the Stephens Family Clinical Research Institute at Carle Health. It’s home to the only Siemens MAGNETOM Terra 7 Tesla MRI scanner in Illinois.

On sabbatical in 2019-20, Webb spent a year working at the Stephens Family Clinical Research Institute at Carle Foundation Hospital, planning for and installing the center’s 7 Tesla MRI.

“The opportunity to set up a wide-ranging imaging center to link technological and methodological developments at the university with clinical and clinical research applications at Carle is very exciting,” Webb said. “We hope to expand existing expertise in MRI, ultrasound and optical imaging technologies, while providing a research and mentoring home for several new hires across many colleges at the university.”