Glenn Walter, PhD

Throughout my career, I have pushed cutting-edge magnetic resonance (MR) technology in order to answer clinically relevant physiology and metabolomics questions. Diverse collaborations with investigators with different backgrounds (physiologist, cell biologist, engineers, biochemist, physicists, clinicians, etc) have helped me to successfully tackle common problems. My primary area of focus had been the development of translational noninvasive imaging and spectroscopy techniques for clinical applications, with extensive experiences in both animal models and patients. I had the good fortune of performing my Ph.D. work focused on in vivo metabolism using MR under the guidance of the late Drs. Jack Leigh, Britton Chance, and Mildred Cohn at the University of Pennsylvania. With this basic training in biophysics and metabolism, my post-doctoral fellowship was performed with Dr. H. Lee Sweeney in the Department of Physiology at the University of Pennsylvania. During my time as a post-doctoral fellow, I expanded my knowledge of MR to study the in vivo physiology and metabolism of dystrophic muscle, prior to and following gene transfer of therapeutic genes as well as MR marker genes encoding for unique metabolic pathways. Ever since then, I have been using these combined biophysics, MR, and physiology foundations to develop comprehensive ways to monitor and study muscle structure, function, and metabolism in vivo using novel MR and optical imaging techniques. The University of Florida has provided a rich environment to build my research program, with UF being home to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL), McKnight Brain Institute, Clinical Translational Sciences, Myology, and Powell Gene Therapy Institutes. I was also a founding member of Southeast Center for Integrated Metabolism, funded through the NIH common fund, and the director of its NMR metabolomics core. I have greater than 20 yrs. of experience with skeletal muscle research, and lead data coordination and analysis cores for multicenter NIH studies focused on the use of MR Imaging/Spectroscopy in preclinical models and in subjects with a range of different types of muscular dystrophy. Specifically, I have extensive experience with MR sequence design, implementation, and processing of MRI/MRS data in neuromuscular diseases on multiple platforms.