Postdoctoral Associate- Department of Diagnostic Radiology -Yale School of Medicine
LMI: 2009-2012
I am a Postdoctoral Associate in the YSM Department of Diagnostic Radiology. I work the Image Processing and Analysis Group (IPAG) with Dr. James S. Duncanand Dr. Kevin A. Pelphrey.
My research focus is multi-modal and clinical applications of medical imaging. Specifically, my goal is to integrate multiple perspectives of the brain and body to better understand and predict the effects of neurological disorders. I approach medical imaging problems from a system-level viewpoint. By leveraging engineering tools, such as probabilistic modeling, signal processing and network theory, I am able to intelligently model the interactions within the brain. The overall goal is to improve diagnosis and treatment of debilitating illnesses, such as epilepsy, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.
I completed my PhD in August 2012, under the supervision of Prof. Polina Golland at MIT. My PhD thesis investigates generative models of brain connectivity. In contrast to traditional imaging, brain connectivity analyzes the interactions between regions. Such relationships inform us about patterns of neural communication as well as the structural/functional organization of the brain. My thesis tackles two challenging problems in the field: (1) multi-modal analysis of functional MRI and diffusion MRI data, and (2) localizing impairments of a neurological disorder based on global connectivity patterns. I rely on probabilistic graphical models to capture hidden and observed interactions within the brain.
I earned my B.S. (2006) and M.Eng. (2007) in Electrical Engineering from MIT. My M.Eng. thesis was supervised by Prof. Alan V. Oppenheim; it explores a novel method for signal approximation that is based on an anti-aliasing frequency warping.