Golnaz Moallem, PhD
Mentor: Mirabela Rusu, PhD and Bruce Daniel, MD
(9/1/2022 - 8/31/2023)

Golnaz Moallem is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Personalized Integrative Medicine Laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University. Her research interests include machine learning and computer vision applications in clinical data analysis, particularly the design and development of deep vision systems for medical image analysis including image classification and object recognition. She completed her B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, and her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Texas Tech University. During her Ph.D. studies, she developed fast and effective CNN-based deep vision systems for image classification and object detection in two projects focusing on wildlife monitoring and cancer cell characterization. As a SCIT Fellow, she will work with Drs. Mirabela Rusu and Bruce Daniel towards performing radiology-pathology fusion for developing a deep learning framework that predicts treatment response based on pre-treatment MRI scans in breast cancer patients.

Sara Saunders, PhD
Mentors: Mirabela Rusu, PhD; Richard Fan, MD; Geoffrey Sonn, MD
(9/1/2022 - 8/31/2023)

Sara is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Urology dedicated to tackling challenges in medical imaging research that must be addressed prior to translation into clinical practice. Currently she researches prostate cancer detection on MRI. As a SCIT fellow, she collaborates with Drs. Fan and Sonn in the Department of Urology and Drs. Rusu and Iagaru in the Department of Radiology. Prior to joining this team at Stanford, she earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from the University of Minnesota, where her research focused on clinical studies investigating both prostate cancer and liver disease. Additionally, she received a Masters in Engineering from Dartmouth. Before pursuing graduate studies, Sara studied Mathematics and Nursing at the University of Wisconsin and worked as a Registered Nurse at Mayo Clinic. Her current research focuses on improving accuracy of prostate cancer detection on MRI with deep learning methods and generalizing these techniques to multi-vendor data.

Hsiang-Hua (Andy) Hung, MD
Mentors: Sharon Pitteri, PhD; Joseph DeSimone, PhD, Adam de la Zerda, PhD, Steven Poplack, MD
(7/1/2022 - 6/30/2024)

Andy is a radiology fellow who believes in advancing preventive health and early cancer detection with molecular markers and imaging. He earned his B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto (2006), M.A.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Toronto (2008), and M.D. (2017) and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (2014) from Northwestern University. He completed residency in diagnostic radiology and nuclear medicine at Stanford Health Care (2022). Previously, Andy worked on biomaterial wound dressings at Defence R&D Canada, studied quantum dot-based cancer imaging probes targeted at matrix metalloprotease-7 under Dr. Warren Chan and Dr. Gang Zheng, and developed gadolinium-carbon nanomaterials and a multiparametric technique for MR molecular imaging under Dr. Thomas Meade. As a SCIT fellow, Andy is working under his mentors to develop microneedle technology to sample breast interstitial fluid biomarkers to improve the accuracy of breast cancer screening and optical coherence tomography histology to decrease the positive margin rate in lumpectomy for breast cancer.

Shirin Pourashraf, PhD
Mentors: Craig Levin, PhD and Andrei Iagaru, MD
(2/1/2022 - 1/31/2024)

Shirin Pourashraf is a Postdoctoral Fellow Scholar in the Department of Radiology, Molecular Imaging Instrumentation Laboratory (MIIL). She is passionate about exploring novel methods for designing and developing low noise high performance circuit boards and front-end electronics for biomedical instrumentations and medical systems. Shirin received her Ph.D. (2018) in Electrical Engineering/Low Power Analog and Mixed-Signal Integrated Circuits (IC) Design from New Mexico State University. She earned her M.S. (2011) in Microelectronics at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Iran and a B.S. (2007) in Electrical Engineering from Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz, Iran. As a SCIT fellow, Shirin works with Drs. Andrei Iagaru and Craig Levin towards building a 100 ps FWHM coincidence time resolution pre-clinical partial ring time-of-flight positron emission tomography (TOF-PET) scanner with 3D event positioning capability enabling further advancement of TOF-PET’s ability to visualize and quantify cancer lesions or alternately to reduce scan time or dose injected into the patient.

Negar Golestani, PhD
Mentors: Mirabela Rusu, PhD and Bruce Daniel, MD
(9/1/2021 - 8/31/2023)

Negar Golestani is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Radiology Department at Stanford. Her primary interest in health sensing and imaging, biomedical data fusion, and machine learning in personalized healthcare. She completed a dual degree from the University of Southern California in 2021 and graduated with an M.S./Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. degree in Computer Science. She earned her B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 2014. During her doctoral studies under the mentorship of Dr. Mahta Moghaddam, she worked on hardware and software development of wireless sensor networks for health monitoring. She introduced a new wearable system based on magnetic induction for human activity recognition and 3D motion tracking. As a SCIT Fellow, she works with Drs. Mirabela Rusu and Bruce Daniel toward developing an AI-based detection model distinguishing DCIS from IBC on pre-operative breast MRI to enable pixel-level assessments and improve patient screening for breast cancer.

Carson Sibley, MD
Mentors: Andreas Loening, MD, PhD and Shreyas Vasanawala, MD
(7/1/2021 - 6/30/2023)

Carson is a radiology fellow with a passion for lymphatic and cancer imaging.  He completed a dual certification pathway in diagnostic radiology and nuclear radiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas (2021).  During residency, he studied LI-RADS treatment response after DEB-TACE under the mentorship of Dr. Takeshi Yokoo and growth kinetics and radiogenomics of renal cell carcinoma under the mentorship of Dr. Ivan Pedrosa.  Prior to residency, he attended medical school at UT Southwestern (2016) where he studied gene expression of lymphangiogenic non-small cell lung cancer under the mentorship of Dr. Michael Dellinger.  As a body MR fellow, Carson’s additional research and clinical interests lie in adult and pediatric PET/MR applications, prostate cancer, gynecologic malignancies, pelvic floor dysfunction, and rectal cancer staging.  As a SCIT Fellow, Carson works under the guidance of his team of mentors toward optimizing lymphatic imaging, particularly MR lymphangiography, to maximize clinically relevant data and drive therapeutic innovation for patients with a variety of lymphatic pathologies.