people

My scientific interests lie at the intersection of computer science, biomedical imaging, and neurodegenerative disease research. I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2003 from the University of North Carolina, where I researched statistical shape analysis and its applications to neuroimaging under the direction of Stephen M. Pizer, Ph.D. I joined the PICSL lab at the University of Pennsylvania Department of Radiology as a postdoc the same year and joined the faculty in 2006. Throughout my career, my research has focused on computational techniques focused on specific, complex anatomical structures and on using postmortem imaging to interrogate these structures in detail. The main thrust of my recent work has been in neurodegenerative disease applications. Our team has developed specialized image analysis techniques and rich detailed probabilistic atlases for the medial temporal lobe, a brain region central to episodic memory and singularly involved in early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. These methods have contributed to biomarkers used to study neurodegenerative disease heterogeneity, track disease progression and response to treatment. My group is also heavily invested into open-source software development, including our flagship tool ITK-SNAP, which has over 8,000 monthly downloads, a family of associated tools for image processing (c3d) and deformable registration (greedy), tools for medial temporal lobe morphometry (ASHS & CRASHS), among others. I co-direct the Neuroimaging Core of the Penn Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (Penn ADRC), with a specific focus on postmortem imaging and quantitative methods.

Dr. David Wolk is Professor of Neurology, Chief of the Division of Cognitive Neurology, Director of the National Institute of Aging funded Penn Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, Co-Director of the Penn Institute on Aging, and Co-Director of the Penn Memory Center.

Dr. Wolk’s primary clinical interest has been in the diagnosis and care of individuals with a variety of neurodegenerative conditions. His research has focused on the cognitive neuroscience of memory decline associated with aging and Alzheimer’s Disease using techniques including behavioral testing, structural and functional MRI, and FDG and molecular PET imaging. Much of this work is also directed at examining biomarkers, including behavioral and neuroimaging, that differentiate healthy aging from the earliest transition to AD and their potential role in understanding disease mechanisms and incorporation into treatment trials. Another related thread of his work has been to better understand, classify and predict sources of heterogeneity in AD. Dr. Wolk has had sustained NIH support since 2003 and has been the principal or co-investigator on numerous local, national and international studies, including therapeutic trials.

Dr. Wolk completed his medical training at Johns Hopkins University, a Neurology residency at the University of Pennsylvania, and clinical Fellowship training in Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School; where he also completed a post-doctoral research fellowship studying memory in Alzheimer’s Disease. Amongst a number of honors, he is the recipient of the American Academy of Neurology’s Norman Geschwind Prize in Behavioral Neurology.

Sandhitsu (Sandy) Das trained as an electrical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur before obtaining his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Since then, he has been part of PICSL and Patchlab and joined the Neurology department as Research Faculty. His work broadly focuses on studying pathology and normative brain function at a macroscopic level through the use of non-invasive imaging. His current work emphasizes novel use of multimodality techniques, including in-vivo and ex-vivo imaging, to study heterogeneity in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. In addition, Sandy is also interested in developing high-resolution imaging technologies to explore brain structure and function utilizing 7 tesla MRI.

I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania under the supervision of Prof. Paul Yushkevich, where I also obtained my PhD. Previously, I completed MSc. in computer science in the Shape Analysis Group at McGill University where I was supervised by Prof. Kaleem Siddiqi and Prof. Louis Collins at the Montreal Neurological Institute. My primary research focus is to develop computational methods to analyze ultra-high resolution postmortem human brain at 7 tesla MRI and link morphometry with histopathology in Alzheimer’s and related dementias.

I am a postdoctoral researcher working at imaging biomarker design in multi-modality data for neurodegenerative disease. I am very excited about the neuroimaging I am currently studying. I have learned a lot at PATCH Lab, from the pathology of neurological diseases to image appearances, and from image analysis to coding. Before joining PATCH Lab, I received my PhD in Computational Mathematics and bachelor’s degree in mathematics and applied mathematics from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China.