I am section head of abdominal imaging within the Department of Radiology. I am very excited about the opportunities available at OHSU, the focused direction that OHSU is taking towards precision medicine, molecular imaging, and cancer in specific. These initiatives dovetail very much with my interests and background, and I am eager to become a part of the OHSU efforts. Furthermore, these interests are in concert with the philosophy of the Department of Radiology as we increase our translational efforts and research footprint within the institution.

I graduated from University of Michigan in 1988 with a degree in nuclear engineering and began gravitating to imaging sciences and interactions of radiation and matter. I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continued to refine my interests in imaging sciences by completing a Ph.D. in radiological sciences and nuclear engineering using MRI to better understand and study quantitative assessments of neuronal degeneration.  This both enhanced my appreciation of scientific research, but also fomented my desire to treat patients. I graduated from Harvard Medical School with a desire to pursue radiology and become a physician scientist. I completed my training in radiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital where I was chief resident, and also was asked to stay on staff in the Division of Abdominal Imaging and Interventional Radiology. While on staff, I received grants to allow me to pursue post-doctoral training in molecular imaging at the Center for Molecular Imaging research, and further refined my goals into developing MRI for imaging the tumor microenvironment. I was on staff for 10 years, and my career as a physician scientist at the Massachusetts General Hospital culminated as the medical director of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where I combined my interests in cancer imaging, for awards in imaging pancreatic cancer with magnetic nanoparticles and also became a leader in PET-MRI research over the past few years.

My long-term professional goal is to develop and lead research initiatives in the development of quantitative tools to evaluate with MRI the early diagnosis and efficacy of therapeutic strategies against cancer. Quantitative imaging and molecular imaging are challenging new fields that are constantly evolving and growing. Furthermore, the field of cancer therapeutics has demonstrated a near exponential growth in the development of novel small molecule targeted agents. Although imaging plays a significant role in the evaluation of these therapeutic agents, there is a need for physician radiologic scientists who both engage and treat these patients, and also are interested in leading the effort for the development of quantitative, diagnostic tools aimed at accurately assessing the efficacy of these therapies in the preclinical and clinical setting. Furthermore, there is a need for biologists, molecular oncologists, and other basic scientists to have an increased understanding of the role of imaging in their science. This will allow the proper education and training at the undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral level to occur in order to have a clear translational path from pre-clinical to clinical trial design.

During the last 10 years, in addition to NIH funding, and clinical work, I have been involved in graduate education at MIT and Harvard Medical school at the undergraduate and graduate levels in courses including anatomy, and magnetic resonance imaging. Furthermore, I have had the pleasure of spending the last four years on the Harvard/MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) medical school admissions committee. I am excited about mentoring the clinical faculty in my section towards enhancing their research opportunities at OHSU, and also at the opportunity to continue such efforts including mentoring students with an emphasis on molecular and cellular biology and cancer biology while at OHSU as it pertains to imaging within their scientific questions. I am honored to hopefully serve as a bridge between our two departments and engage others within the imaging community to do the same.