Dr. Nima Kokabi

Nima Kokabi, MD, is an Associate Professor of Radiology, Vice Chair of Clinical Research, Interventional Oncology Director, and Cancer Imaging Director at UNC Chapel Hill. Before he joined the UNC Department of Radiology he spent five years at Emory University. Dr. Kokabi was born in Iran and grew up in Canada. He graduated with honors from the University of Sydney Medical School in 2011. From there, he completed his internship at MetroWest Medical Center, Harvard Medical School before moving on to his Diagnostic Residency at Emory University School of Medicine. He completed his Vascular Interventional Radiology Fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine in 2017.

Dr. Kokabi was majoring in engineering during his undergraduate education. During that time, he worked on image-processing projects. That was his first introduction to Radiology. While collaborating with some doctors on those projects, he realized there needed to be more connection between people who practice medicine and those who create medical devices. He intended to bridge that gap as much as one person could. That is where his interest in Radiology originated. He thought that of all the fields in medicine, it’s the one that relies heavily on technology and advancement. During medical school, he was in a unique small group of people that wanted to do Radiology from the beginning. So many of his peers and colleagues didn’t even know what Radiology was when they entered medical school.

He eventually chose to pursue Interventional Radiology as his specialty because the beauty of IR is that you get to do life-saving procedures. Many areas of radiology are heavily diagnostic and have no interaction with patients. However, IR is integral to many treatment teams for cancer or non-cancer-related diseases.