Prof. Frederik (Freek) J. Beekman, PhD, CEO and Founder of Free Bee Int’l, and part time leader of the section Biomedical Imaging at TU Delft, is widely known for his innovations in advancing molecular imaging.

From 1995 to 2008, he was a faculty member at the Image Sciences Institute and Department of Nuclear Medicine at University Medical Centre Utrecht. In 2007, he went to TU Delft to head biomedical imaging section. In 2006, Dr. Beekman founded MILabs BV, a molecular imaging spin-off from UMC Utrecht, focusing on his inventions in high-resolution PET and SPECT and the design of multimodal and stand-alone scanners for preclinical and clinical applications. MILabs was succesfully sold to the Rigaku Corp. in 2021.

Freek has published more than 170 peer-reviewed articles and holds more than 20 patent families. Recognitions for his achievements have included the Physics Valorization Prize from the Dutch Science Foundation, multiple SNMMI and IEEE awards, and two times the Innovation of the Year Award from the World Molecular Imaging Society.

Many of the cutting-edge imaging systems pioneered by Dr. Beekman and his team are deployed across biomedical research institutions worldwide, driving a broad range of discoveries and facilitating the development of novel tracers and pharmaceuticals.