Rate My Professor Peter Stanwell

Professor Peter Stanwell serves as Professor and Head of Discipline, Diagnostic Radiography, within the School of Health Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia. An accredited Medical Radiation Practitioner, he has over 25 years of experience applying magnetic resonance technologies in clinical and research settings across Australia and North America. Stanwell earned his undergraduate degree in Medical Radiation Science from the University of Newcastle, completed a Fellowship in Clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA, and obtained a Doctor of Philosophy from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney. His early career involved non-destructive testing in heavy industry, radiography at John Hunter Hospital, and establishing MRI services at Wagga Wagga and Sydney Adventist Hospital. Post-PhD, he worked as an MRI physicist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, translating research into clinical practice, and held an Instructor in Radiology position at Harvard Medical School from 2008 to 2011. He joined the University of Newcastle full-time thereafter, collaborating on stroke research and teaching advanced MRI to students.

Stanwell's research focuses on advanced neuroimaging techniques, including diffusion-weighted MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, applied to mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), sport-related concussion, stroke, chronic pain, and personalized therapies for cancers such as breast, ovarian, and melanoma. He has authored numerous publications in premier journals, including NeuroImage, Radiology, Investigative Radiology, and Sports Medicine. Notable papers include "Glutamate and Glutamine: A Review of In Vivo MRS in the Human Brain" (2013, 382 citations), "The Prevalence of Food Addiction as Assessed by the Yale Food Addiction Scale: A Systematic Review" (2014, 683 citations), "Reperfusion Therapy in Acute Ischemic Stroke: Dawn of a New Era?" (2018), and "A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Concussion in Rugby Union" (2014). His contributions have earned him two Fulbright Fellowships—a Professional Scholarship in 2017 at MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research and a Senior Scholarship in 2022 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Beckman Institute—as well as the University of Newcastle's NEWstar Award (2020) and Emerging Research Leader award (2011).