MRI Research Institute Directory

Douglas Ballon Laboratory

Douglas Ballon
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Douglas Ballon, Ph.D.
  • Professor of Physics

Douglas Ballon received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1985 in experimental nuclear physics.  He did postdoctoral work in medical physics at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 1985-1988, and subsequently joined the faculty there, developing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques for applications in oncology.  In 2001, he became Founding Director of the Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center (CBIC) at Weill Cornell Medical College, a comprehensive MRI, positron emission tomography (PET), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), CT, ultrasound, optical imaging, and cyclotron facility that supports nearly 100 investigators from 15 academic institutions. Over the last 20 years he has held a leadership role in the development and management of imaging technologies.  He has more than 30 years of experience in the development of imaging biomarkers for the detection, characterization, and therapeutic monitoring of disease.

Alexey V. Dimov Laboratory

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Alexey V. Dimov, Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Radiology

Alexey Dimov received his undergraduate degree in physics from the N.I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod (UNN), Radiophysics Department, and his doctorate from the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. After a post-doc at the University of Chicago, he is back at Cornell where his research is focused on quantitative separation of magnetic susceptibility sources, and abdominal quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) with a focus on the liver and kidneys. Outside of the lab, he is an amateur very high frequency/ultra high frequency (VHF/UHF)  radio operator (emergency services radio traffic monitoring, ADS-B flight tracking, weather satellite APT).  

Jonathan Dyke Laboratory

Jonathan Dyke
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Jonathan Dyke, Ph.D., DABMP
  • Associate Professor of Physics Research

Jonathan Dyke graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1997 with a Ph.D. in Engineering. He served as a postdoctoral fellow (medical physics) at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from 1998 to 2001. He was an assistant professor of physics (radiology) at Weill Cornell Medicine from 2001 until 2018, when he became an associate professor of physics (radiology).   

Edward K. Fung Laboratory

Ed Fung
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Edward K. Fung, Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor of Medical Physics

Edward K. Fung, Ph.D., is a Weill Cornell Medicine assistant professor of medical physics in radiology. 

Gene Kim Laboratory

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Gene Kim, Ph.D.
  • Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Dr. Gene Kim is a professor of biomedical engineering in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Southern California and completed his postdoctoral fellowship in cancer imaging at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the development of quantitative dynamic contrast-enhanced and diffusion magnetic resonance imaging methods for early detection of cancer and assessment of treatment response, particularly in breast cancer and head and neck cancer. Dr. Kim’s laboratory has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

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Ayesha Das
  • Research Technician II

Ayesha Das received her Bachelor in Psychology from New York University. During her undergraduate training, she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Wendy Suzuki in the Center for Neuroscience on the physiological changes in sedentary, middle-aged adults who underwent a three-month exercise intervention. She received a Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund grant to further investigate changes in electroencephalograms (EEG) and behavior in response to exercise intervention. She also worked in the laboratory of Dr. Keith Woerpel in the Department of Chemistry on synthesizing a diastereoselective cyclic acetal and received another Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund grant to pursue this synthesis. In the Gene Kim lab, Ayesha is interested in synthesizing multimodal contrast agents in order to improve the reproducibility and confidence of the arterial input function as measured through dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). 

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Jin Zhang, Ph.D.
  • Instructor of Electric and Computer Engineering

Dr. Jin Zhang is an instructor in the radiology department of Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM). Before joining WCM, he was an associate research scientist at the New York University Langone Medical Center. He has focused on dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research for a decade. He specializes in skills related to DCE-MRI using mouse models, including tumor implantation, animal handling, DCE-MRI scanning, image reconstruction, pharmacokinetic model analysis, data processing, and visualization. One contribution: the development of active contrast encoding (ACE)-MRI, which measures multiple parameters in a shortened DCE-MRI scan time and eliminates the need for image registration in traditional DCE-MRI. His research interests are focused on shortening clinical scan time and improving image quality and resolution. With collaborators, he developed another innovative technique for DCE-MRI, 3D ultra-short echo time with golden-angle radial sparse parallel MRI (3D-UTE-GRASP), which extended the GRASP technique from volumetric coverage to 3D isotropic high-resolution coverage in DCE-MRI. These techniques can be directly implemented to clinical scans, greatly improving DCE-MRI quantitative analysis, and benefitting the diagnosis and treatment of various cancers.

Eddy Solomon
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Eddy Solomon, Ph.D.
  • Instructor of Chemical Physics

Eddy Solomon’s research combines diverse aspects of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), including pulse sequence programming, advanced image reconstruction, and pre-clinical and clinical patient studies. He received his Ph.D. from the department of chemical physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he developed novel MR methods, based on spatiotemporal encoding (SPEN) principles. He is now a Weill Cornell Medicine faculty instructor of chemical physics in the radiology department. He works on head and neck cancer using diffusion and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) approaches. His aim is to advance body magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods in humans, to improve both basic knowledge and patient care.

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Jonghyun Bae, M.S.
  • Visiting Graduate Assistant

Jonghyun Bae received his bachelor’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University and his master’s degree in electrical engineering from New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. in biomedical imaging and technology at Vilcek Institute of Biomedical Graduate study (NYU School of Medicine). His research focuses on detecting subtle blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruptions in Alzheimer’s disease and aging using dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging. Jonghyun has also been interested in developing deep learning-based tools to aid the DCE analysis tailored to detect the subtle changes in BBB. 

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Karl Kiser

Karl Kiser received his bachelor’s degree in biophysics from Pitzer College, a Claremont College. During his undergraduate studies, Karl developed his interest in medical imaging while working under Dr. Adam Landsberg, investigating network properties of the human brain connectome from diffusion tensor imaging and fiber tractography. In the Gene Kim Lab, Karl’s focus is on developing methods for characterizing the tissue microenvironment of cancer, particularly cellular water exchange, through the kinetic modeling of dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging. 

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Sawwal Qayyum
  • Research Technician II

Sawwal Qayyum received his bachelor’s degree in biology from Ramapo College of New Jersey. During his undergraduate training, he spent his seminar year looking at embryogenesis-lethal genes in C. elegans using RNA interference (RNAi) and  clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 to visualize protein localization via green fluorescent (GFP) recombinant vectors. He previously worked at the New York University Langone Medical Center as a senior animal care technician, attaining there his laboratory animal technologist certification. He spent two years interning at the Preclinical Imaging Core headed by Dr. Wadghiri. There he became familiar with different modalities of optical imaging, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and tumor pH probe design. In the Gene Kim lab, Sawwal is studying the effect of metronomic chemotherapy on the tumor vasculature and angiogenesis of orthotopic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and glioma mouse models using dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI.

Ilhami Kovanlikaya Laboratory

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Ilhami Kovanlikaya, M.D.
  • Associate Professor of Research

Dr. Kovanlikaya graduated from Hacettepe University, Medical School, Ankara, Turkey (1978), and completed his radiology residency (1982) at the same institution. During his tenure as an attending radiologist in the Department of Radiology at Dokuz Eylul University, Izmir, Turkey, he was appointed Dean of the Medical School in 1999.  He also served as professor and chair of the department of radiology, at Yeditepe University, Istanbul, between 2004 to 2007. He joined the department of adiology at Weill Cornell Medicine in 2007.  

Thanh D. Nguyen Laboratory

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Thanh D. Nguyen, Ph.D.
  • Associate Professor of Physics Research

Thanh D. Nguyen, Ph.D., is an associate professor of physics in radiology with the Weill Cornell Medicine Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Institute.

Emilie Meryem Khalfallah, Ph.D.
  • Postdoctoral Associate in Radiology
Ha Manh Luu, Ph.D.
  • Research Associate

Pascal Spincemaille Laboratory

Pascal Spincemaille
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Pascal Spincemaille, Ph.D.
  • Associate Professor of Physics Research

Dr. Pascal Spincemaille is an associate professor of physics research in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. He received his master’s degree, and his postdoctoral degree, in physics from the Katholieke Universteit Leuven, Belgium. He has worked on the development of free-breathing cardiac imaging, including coronary artery and delayed enhancement imaging; the first reported vastly accelerated (below 1s temporal frame rate) 3D spiral dynamic contrast enhanced imaging; and various fundamental contributions to quantitative susceptibility mapping in the brain, liver and heart. 

Jiahao Li
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Jiahao Li
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Jiahao Li is a Ph.D. student in the biomedical engineering (BME) program at Cornell University. He grew up in China and completed his B.S. in engineering physics and economics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is interested in signal and image processing and reconstruction. His main project involves cardiac magnetic resonance imaging; specifically, he is developing a novel magnetic resonance (MR) data acquisition and reconstruction scheme for cardiac quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM).  

Yi Wang Laboratory

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Yi Wang, Ph.D.
  • Professor of Physics
  • Director, Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Institute
  • Professor, Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca

Yi Wang, Ph.D., holds the Faculty Distinguished Professorship in the Department of Radiology, and is a tenured Professor of Physics in Radiology, Director of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Research Institute at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM), and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University. He studied theoretical physics and switched to applying physics to medicine. Professor Wang has invented multiple MRI technologies of great importance to the clinical and scientific communities. 

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Kelly Gillen, Ph.D., MBA
  • Assistant Professor of Cell Biology in Radiology
  • Director of Research Strategy, Department of Radiology

Kelly Gillen received her Bachelor of Science in biological engineering from Cornell University in 2004. She received her Master of Science in biomedical engineering from Tufts University in 2006, and her doctorate from the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences in 2014. While a graduate student at Cornell, Kelly conducted her Ph.D. thesis research at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where she received a fellowship from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program to investigate the role of Focal Adhesion Kinase in breast cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis. She has conducted research projects at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and Boston Scientific. Kelly received her Master of Business Administration and Master of Science in Healthcare Leadership from Cornell University in May 2021. Her research interests include using imaging and histological techniques to understand the contribution of iron overload to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease. 

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Chao Li
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Chao Li is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Applied and Engineering Physics, and a visiting graduate student at Weill Cornell Medicine. She received her bachelor of science degree from Australian National University, where she majored in math and physics.  Her doctoral project is focusing on image reconstruction and motion artifact correction in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using deep learning and classical methods. In her spare time, she enjoys playing mobile games and watching movies. 

Jiahao Li
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Jiahao Li
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Jiahao Li is a Ph.D. student in the biomedical engineering (BME) program at Cornell University. He grew up in China and completed his B.S. in engineering physics and economics at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He is interested in signal and image processing and reconstruction. His main project is on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging; specifically, he is developing a novel magnetic resonance (MR) data acquisition and reconstruction scheme for cardiac quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM).  

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Alexandra Roberts, M.Eng.
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Alexandra Roberts is an electrical engineering doctoral student from Bradenton, Florida. Her current work includes shadow reduction in quantitative susceptibility mapping and super-resolution of susceptibility-weighted imaging. Prior to joining the Wang Lab, Alexandra worked as a machine vision engineer at Benz Research & Development. She completed a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Florida, where her research involved 3D x-ray reconstruction of printed circuit boards with the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity Lab. Alexandra earned a B.S. at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where her research focused on systems genomics applications. Outside of the lab, Alexandra enjoys playing guitar, running and rock climbing. 

Dominick Romano
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Dominick Romano
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Dominick grew up just a 45-minute train ride away from New York City on the South Shore of Long Island. He studied bioengineering (even taking some extra physics classes for fun) and conducted research on endothelial cell migration as an undergraduate at Hofstra University. At Cornell, he is a doctoral student studying biomedical engineering in the Wang Lab. His project focuses on further developing techniques for Quantitative Transport Mapping (QTM) and applying QTM to clinical images. In his free time, Dom enjoys bowling, collecting and listening to records, and reading physics texts. 

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Mert Sisman
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Mert Sisman is from Ankara, Turkey, where he also received both his BSc. and MSc. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. He is now a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Cornell. Always interested in medical research, and a huge fan of math, he found his way into MRI research.  He is currently interested in developing novel algorithms to improve quantitative imaging modalities. You can always find him playing video games unless he is doing a movie marathon

Carly Skudkin
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Carly Skudin
  • Research Program Manager

Carly Skudin is the Research Program Manager of the MRI Research Institute. She works closely with Dr. Yi Wang and other MRIRI investigators to monitor ongoing research projects; oversee statistical and data management operations; provide leadership during the research grant process; execute grant writing, scientific publication, and regulatory reviews; and manage the appointments of the lab's faculty and students. Skudin graduated from Colgate University with a degree in neuroscience.

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Ben Weppner
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Ben Weppner is from Buffalo, New York, where he studied biomedical engineering and researched measuring perfusion in brain MRI scans at the University at Buffalo. Weppner is now a Cornell University Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering, where his research focuses on quantitative transport mapping (QTM).

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Qihao Zhang
  • Postdoctoral Associate in Radiology

Qihao Zhang received his bachelor's degree from the biomedical engineering department at Tsinghua University, China. He is currently a doctoral student in biomedical engineering at Cornell University. His research interests include perfusion and permeability quantification form-contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) images and arterial spin labeling (ASL) sequence design. 

Hangwei Zhuang
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Hangwei Zhuang
  • Visiting Graduate Student

Hangwei Zhuang is from Jiangsu, China. She studied math and biomedical engineering as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary and Columbia University. Her research project focuses on quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM). 

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Renjiu Hu
  • Visiting Graduate Assistant

Renjiu Hu received his bachelor's degree in applied physics from the University of Science and Technology of China. He is currently a doctoral student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. His research interests include perfusion and permeability quantification of arterial spin labeling (ASL) images and deep learning.

Simone Winkler Laboratory

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Simone Angela Winkler, Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor

Professor Simone Angela Winkler graduated from the J. Kepler University of Linz, Austria, having majored in mechatronics with distinction and in less than minimum time. She pursued her graduate studies in electrical engineering at the École Polytechnique Montréal, Canada, where she specialized in radiofrequency (RF)/microwave engineering, funded by two fellowships (DOC fellowship/Austrian Academy of Science;  first rank in the competition for a PhD fellowship from the FQRNT Québec). For her research during her MS.c. and Ph.D. degrees, she received many scientific awards and scholarships. During her postdoctoral work at McGill University, she developed a microwave near-field imaging system for breast cancer detection. She committed to a postdoctoral fellow position at Stanford University in ultra-high-field magnetic resonance imaging engineering (funded by a National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) research fellowship from 2012-2014). 

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Mina Chookhachizadeh Moghadam, Ph.D.
  • Postdoctoral Associate

Mina Chookhachizadeh Moghadam received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Irvine, in 2020. Her main area of research is developing machine learning (ML) and deep learning algorithms with applications in healthcare, medical devices, and predictive medicine. During her graduate studies, she extensively worked in multidisciplinary projects to develop innovative ML platforms for patients' physiological monitoring and early prediction of hypotensive events in intensive care units (ICU)s. She has also worked as an intern at Edward Lifesciences Co. and fostered collaboration with anesthesiologists and researchers at Cleveland Clinics, to increase the impact of her research on real-world field applications.

Elizaveta Motovilova
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Elizaveta Motovilova, Ph.D.
  • Postdoctoral Associate

Elizaveta Motovilova received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. with a major in applied mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 2012 and 2014, respectively. She received her Ph.D. from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) in 2019. During her studies at SUTD, she was awarded the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) MTT-S Microwave Engineering for Medical Applications Fellowship for research on the sensitivity improvement of radiofrequency (RF) coils for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). From 2019 to 2020, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at SUTD, where she continued her work on MRI radiofrequency (RF) coils with a focus on frequency tuning mechanisms. Her main research interests include design and development of MRI RF coils, metamaterials and resonators for RF coil sensitivity improvement, ultra-high field MRI engineering and safety. 

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Fraser Robb, Ph.D.
  • Chief Technology Leader, General Electric Healthcare Advisor

Dr. Robb has been in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) hardware since graduate school at the University of Aberdeen in 1990 under Professors David Lurie and James Hutchison. His Ph.D. thesis, “Field-Cycled Proton Electron Double Resonance Imaging of Dissolved Oxygen,” gave him wonderful hardware training and an appreciation for physiology and metabolism. He learned to build MR systems from basic components. He was a research assistant professor of radiology at Dartmouth College from 1997-1999, working for Professor Harold Swartz on 1.1GHz ESR spectroscopic hardware. Fraser's career has been heavily focused on commercial MRI coil design since starting with USA Instruments/General Electric (GE) Healthcare in 2000 (resulting in more than 40 patents approved or in process on MRI coils). Much of that time was spent building phased arrays for body, musculoskeletal and neurology imaging (1.5 tesla (T), 3.0T, 8Ch, 32Ch, 64Ch etc.) working within GE Healthcare’s Center of Excellence for Coil Development. He is pioneering advanced prototyping and simulation methods for MRI coils, and developed a strategy leading to the Air Technology MRI Coil revolution. He was recognized internally as one of GE’s most prolific recent inventors, driving the strategy leading to development of Air Coil Technology. He has an Honorary Professorship from the University of Sheffield, and is greatly honored to contribute to the amazing work of the Winkler Lab. 

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Frida Galaviz Huerta
  • Former Summer Student

Frida Galaviz Huerta was born in Zacatecas, Mexico in 2000 and is pursuing an undergraduate degree at New York University. Frida studies psychology with a triple minor in linguistics, chemistry, and child/adolescent mental studies (CAMS) and is interested in neuroscience research related to infants and adolescents. She graduated in May 2022 and hopes to pursue a graduate degree. 

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Vishwas Mishra, B.Tech
  • Former Rotation Graduate Student

Vishwas received his B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati in 2020. He is a graduate student in the physiology, biophysics and systems biology (PBSB) program at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, and his main research interests lie in computational neuroscience and systems biology. In the Simone Winkler lab he was working on magnetic-resonance guided focused ultrasound coils and their implications in targeted tissue thermal ablation for treating neuropathic pain. 

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Arthur Nghiem

Arthur Nghiem was born in  Houston in 2003. After graduating from high school a year early, he is an undergraduate studying biomedical engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is the principal inventor of the wireless communication device grip guide, for which he was granted a United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)  patent in 2017. He previously conducted a literature review on the use of high-temperature superconductors for accessible magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications under the supervision of Dr. John Thomas Vaughan of Columbia University. He was nominated for the 2019 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Region 4 Outstanding Student Award for his contributions to technical workshops regarding MRI safety and wireless medical devices. His work in the Simone Winkler Lab focused on the generation and curation of datasets for deep learning of tissue heating prediction in ultra high-field MRI. 

Zungho Wesley Zun Laboratory

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Zungho Wesley Zun, Ph.D.
  • Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering

Dr. Zun is an assistant professor of electrical engineering in radiology. He received his B.S. from Korea University in 1998, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in 2004 and 2010 respectively, all three degrees in electrical engineering. Dr. Zun’s research focuses on development of non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods that offer early and reliable biomarkers of impaired perfusion and oxygenation in the context of fetal and neonatal imaging. Ultimate goal: translating these methods to clinical practice.   

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MinJung Jang, Ph.D.
  • Postdoctoral Associate

MinJung Jang is a postdoctoral associate in radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine. She received her Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Republic of Korea in 2021. Her research interests include development of rapid fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques using steady-state free precession, and perfusion imaging of the brain and placenta using arterial spin labeling (ASL) and intravoxel incoherent motion (IVIM) techniques.