Bruce Hasegawa, Ph.D.
bruce.hasegawa@radiology.ucsf.edu
Telephone (415) 353-9472
FAX (415) 353-9458
Bruce Hasegawa was born and raised on an almond ranch (affectionately known as "the nut farm") outside of Fresno California. He earned bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics, and a master's degree in mathematics at Cal State Fresno. After he completed his thesis defense in mathematics, his graduate advisor told him he had a glowing future in finite abelian group theory, upon which he became very depressed and decided to switch fields. He then spent two years working on a PhD in Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington, but dropped out of graduate school after passing his qualifying exams and worked a few months as a carpenter and janitor. He then switched careers again and taught mathematics, physics, and biology at the undergraduate level for the next two years. After losing his teaching position due to passage of Proposition 13, Bruce returned to graduate school to earn a Master's Degree at the University of Colorado Medical Center, then at the University of Wisconsin where he earned his Ph.D. in Medical Physics under the mentorship of Professor Charles Mistretta.
Dr. Hasegawa currently is a Professor of Radiology at UCSF, and a faculty member of the Joint Bioengineering Graduate Group at UCSF and UC-Berkeley, and of the UCSF Medical Information Sciences Graduate Group. Dr. Hasegawa also holds a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at UC Berkeley.
Dr. Hasegawa has written numerous papers in medical x-ray and radionuclide imaging, and is the author of a book on medical imaging (now in its second edition) entitled "The Physics of Medical X-Ray Imaging", and subtitled "The Photon and Me: How I Saw the Light". He is the senior faculty member at the UCSF Physics Research Laboratory. From 1990-2000, Bruce was responsible for managing a 60 acre citrus farm in Fresno, his family's homestead which was founded by his grandparents in the early 1900's. During this time, he discovered that trying to raise nice juicy oranges is quite similar to trying to run a physics research laboratory -- you need lots of fertilizer (of different types, of course) to make things grow!