Researcher completes internship at iHEALTH to deepen his work in cardiovascular magnetic resonance
Matteo Cesario, a PhD student at Maastricht University, will spend three months in Chile working with René Botnar and Claudio Prieto, researchers at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Matteo Cesario is a third-year PhD student in cardiovascular magnetic resonance at Maastricht University and Maastricht University Medical Center (MUMC+) in the Netherlands. In early November, he arrived at the Millennium Institute iHEALTH for a three-month research internship with professors René Botnar and Claudia Prieto, with whom he had already collaborated.
His connection with Chile began two years ago, when he visited Santiago for the 36th Annual Meeting of the Society for Magnetic Resonance Angiography (SMRA 2024). “When I left, I wanted to come back,” he says. “I already knew about the research being done here, which is very good, and I wanted to see it in person and learn more, especially about MRI pulse sequence programming.”
The researcher is Italian but grew up in Brussels. After finishing school, he moved to the Netherlands to study and stayed there for his PhD. As for his next step, he says he hasn’t decided yet, but he plans to do a postdoc or keep doing research in magnetic resonance.
An experience he recommends
Matteo says he is enjoying Chile so much that friends and family are already planning to visit him to see Santiago and the rest of the country. On the research side, he says the experience has met his expectations and that the research being done in Chile is of a very high standard, comparable to Europe’s.
About the team he works with, he says: “It’s a very professional and well-organized group doing important research in the field of magnetic resonance. In this area, I would absolutely recommend it.”
Work is his priority, but he will also take some time to see more of the country. At Christmas, he will travel to the Atacama Desert. “I don’t have much time, and I’m here to work, so I have to find a balance,” he says. Still, he hopes to come back later to keep exploring Chile.
