Daniel Sodickson, MD, PhD

20 years in practice

Chief Medical Scientist · Function Health

Chief Medical Scientist bringing parallel MRI, AI reconstruction, and preventive imaging depth to Function

Cancer Prevention & Screening
Daniel Sodickson, MD, PhD portrait

About

Daniel Sodickson, MD, PhD is Function Health's Chief Medical Scientist and one of the imaging leaders behind the company's preventive-screening push. Harvard-MIT trained in medicine and medical physics, he invented SMASH, the parallel MRI technique that helped speed clinical MRI. At Function, his work connects Ezra's MRI/CT add-ons with the broader lab platform, helping place imaging beside biomarkers as another way to find risk earlier.

What to Know

Signature approach

Sodickson brings preventive imaging science into Function's testing model: faster MRI capture, AI-assisted reconstruction, and scan protocols that can make whole-body screening more practical. His role is especially relevant to Ezra's imaging add-ons, where radiology rigor has to stay clear even as scans become easier for members to access.

What sets them apart

  • Foundational MRI work. His SMASH paper has 3,300+ citations, and his broader record spans 374 publications and 31,000+ citations.
  • AI imaging credibility. He helped lead fastMRI, an open dataset used to benchmark AI reconstruction in academic radiology.
  • Field leadership. He is a former president of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, an ISMRM Gold Medal recipient, and a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.

Expertise

Focus areas

Cancer Prevention & Screening

Patient types

General Adult LongevityExecutives & High PerformersPost-Cancer PatientsAdults 65+

Protocols & technologies

Parallel mri (smash)Compressed sensing mriAi Accelerated image reconstructionWhole Body mri screeningFastmri (open Source ai for mri)Golden Angle radial sparse parallel mri (grasp)Mr Pet combined imagingCt radiation dose reduction

Credentials

Education

  • BS, Physics

    Yale University (1988)

  • BA, Humanities

    Yale University (1988)

  • PhD, Medical Physics

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2004)

  • MD

    Harvard Medical School (2006)

Years in practice

20

Affiliations

Scientific Advisor

Thought Leadership

Books

  • The Future of Seeing: How Imaging Is Changing Our World · Columbia University Press, 2025

Other specialists at Function Health

Directory listings are for informational purposes only. Inclusion does not constitute endorsement. Verify credentials and qualifications independently.