astronomy

Ravi S. Menon

Ravi S. Menon is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Ravi S. Menon rather than just read about it. In short: Ravi Shankar Menon (born 1964) is a Canadian-American biophysicist. He is a former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging at the University of Western Ontario and director of the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping at the Robarts Research Institute.

Key takeaways

Ravi S. Menon belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Ravi S. Menon to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Ravi S. Menon from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Ravi Shankar Menon (born 1964) is a Canadian-American biophysicist. He is a former Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging at the University of Western Ontario and director of the Centre for Functional and Metabolic Mapping at the Robarts Research Institute.

Early life and education Menon was born in 1964 and lived in West Virginia, Virginia, Hawaii, Bombay and Maryland before graduating from University Hill Secondary School in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was born into an academic family as his mother was an electrical engineer and his father was an astronomer. Menon completed his entire post-secondary education in Canada. His Bachelor of Science degree was at the University of British Columbia, his Master of Science degree was at McGill University, and his PhD was at the University of Alberta. His thesis at the University of Alberta was conducted under the supervision of Peter S. Allen in 1990 and titled Some mechanisms of water proton NMR relaxation in model tissue systems. Following this, Menon completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Minnesota where he was heavily involved in the development of a brain imaging technique called Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) with Seiji Ogawa and David W. Tank of Bell Labs and Menon's post-doctoral supervisor, Kamil Ugurbil. The aim of the technique was to measure changing blood flow and oxygenation to observe brain function.

Career Following his post-doctoral fellowship, Menon joined the Robarts Research Institute to develop techniques to gather better images of the brain with MRIs through fMRI. By 2002, Menon was an associate professor in the Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) and held a Canada Research Chair in Functional Neuroimaging. In these roles, Menon continued his research into fMRI and led a laboratory at the Robarts Research Institute. As a result of his research, Menon was named one of Canada's Top 20 researchers aged 40 and under in 2002. Following this, Menon was appointed a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Functional and Molecular Imaging in 2005. While working in this role, Menon was named a member of the steering committee that established the Canadian Action and Perception Network (CAPnet) between York University, Queen's University at Kingston, and UWO. The aim of the iniatiative was to "understand how the brain works, especially in human movement control and perception, and how disease and injury can disrupt these functions." In 2009, he was again recognized amongst the top 40 researchers under the age of 40. Following the renewal of his Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, Menon collaborated with PhD candidate Matthew Quinn to discover if iron deposits in the brain are a cause or consequence of Multiple Sclerosis. They published a study in 2013 that suggested that iron deposits in deep gray matter occur very early on in the disease course. Based on this research, Menon then developed a new technique to track the progression of Multiple Sclerosis by measuring damage in specific areas of the brain called Quantitative Susceptibility Magnetic Resonance Imaging. His contributions to advancements in fMRI and ultra-high-field MRI were later recognized with an election of Fellowship to the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine and Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In July 2017, Menon was named Co-Scientific Director of BrainsCAN at UWO with Lisa Saksida. While working in his new role, Menon began to publish his research on concussions among young athletes who play ice hockey and rugby. In October 2017, he compared MRI brain scans from 17 Bantam-level hockey players who suffered a concussion compared to similarly aged non-concussed players. This subsequently raised concerns about the concussion protocols in youth hockey. Menon later revealed that there were significant structural and functional changes to the brain between concussed players and non-concussed. In 2019, Menon was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada for being a "pioneer in the use of MRI for structural and functional brain imaging."

References

External links Ravi S. Menon publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Ravi S. Menon

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Ravi S. Menon claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Ravi S. Menon before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Ravi S. Menon ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Ravi S. Menon

In research: Ravi S. Menon appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Ravi S. Menon in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Ravi S. Menon is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, Academic staff of the University of Western Ontario, American emigrants to Canada, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Ravi S. Menon outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Ravi S. Menon in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Ravi S. Menon means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Ravi S. Menon out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Ravi S. Menon in simple terms?

Why does Ravi S. Menon matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Ravi S. Menon?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Ravi S. Menon.