Lirong Yan, PhD

Email: lirong.yan@loni.usc.edu
Dr. Lirong Yan is an Associate Professor of Radiology at the Northwestern University. She earned her Ph.D. degree in Biophysics from the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010 followed by three-year postdoc training at UCLA. Dr. Yan’s research focuses on the technical development of novel non-invasive MRI technology with a focus on cerebral vascular and perfusion imaging. Her research expertise includes MRI pulse sequence development, fast image acquisition with golden-angle stack of stars radial, advanced image reconstruction algorithms, and image post-processing. Dr. Yan also has extensive experience in clinical translations of MRI techniques in cerebrovascular diseases, such as stroke, arteriovenous malformations, moyamoya disease, and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Yan has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) of several grants including NIH, American Heart Association, and BrightFocus Foundation. Currently, she is the PIs of four active grants including one NIH K award (K25AG05659), two NIH R01s (R01NS118019, RF1AG072490), and one BrightFocus Foundation (A20201411S).

Robert Smith, PhD

Email: rssmith3348 at gmail.com
Dr. Smith received his PhD in Physics from National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL) at Florida State University, working with Dr. Gregory. S. Boebinger. The focus of his PhD research was in the realm of condensed matter physics to investigate inhomogeneity in strongly correlated electron systems using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy in conjunction with computational models. After joining LOFT, Dr. Smith shifted his research towards Biomedical applications of MRI, currently he is working on several fast imaging techniques as well as using entropy to quantify resting state fMRI.Robert has moved to Washington University St Louis as a postdoc working with Dr. Beau Ances

Emily Kilroy, MS

Email: emilykilroy@gmail.com
Emily graduated with MS of Psychodynamic Developmental Neuroscience from University College of London & Yale University. At LOFT, she was working on the recruitment, data collection and analysis for the NIH project of Pediatric Template of Brain Perfusion. She is now a PhD student at USC in Occupational Science

Collin Y. Liu, MD

Email: collin.y.liu@gmail.com
After completing 2 year clinical fellowship at LOFT and VA hospital, Collin is now Assistant Professor of Neurology at USC Keck School of Medicine. He works closely with LOFT on perfusion MRI, resting state fMRI and vascular compliance measurements in dementia.
Dr. Liu is a graduate of New York Medical College, with dual residency training in neurology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and nuclear medicine at Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology. His research interests are in developing new methods of evaluating resting state networks in cognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, frontotemporal dementia, and vascular dementia.

Mayank Jog, PhD

Email: mayankjog at gmail.com
Mayank Jog joined UCLA as a postdoc research fellow in 2020. Mayank received his PhD in Bioengineering from UCLA in 2017, his thesis is on visualization of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induced electromagnetic and neurophysiological effects using MRI. He joined LOFT as a postdoc research fellow in summer 2017. He continues to work on in vivo MRI mapping of electric current and physiological effects of tDCS on the brain. He is also applying imaging guided tDCS therapy on depression patients.

Soroush Heidari Pahlavian, PhD

Email: soroush.heidari at gmail.com
Soroush joined MIM Software Inc as a Research Scientist in 2020. Soroush's research has been focused on using mechanical engineering principals to evaluate neurological disorders. Prior to his current research, he used computational and experimental techniques in conjunction with medical imaging to assess cerebrospinal fluid dynamics and neural tissue response under physiological and pathophysiological conditions in order to better understand, diagnose, and treat diseases. Currently, he is working with Dr. Lirong Yan on new MR sequences to quantify cerebrovascular hemodynamics and compliance. Google Scholar: https://goo.gl/P95mGG LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/soroushpahlavian

Jin Jin, PhD

Email: Jin.Jin at siemens-healthineers.com
Jin is currently a Senior MR scientist from Siemens Healthineers and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiology, USC Keck School of Medicine. He has expertise in MR physics, ultra-high field systems, radiofrequency coil design and analysis, sequence development, parallel transmit pulse design, and specialized radiofrequency pulses. He is also working actively on the topics such as computational electromagnetics and mathematical modeling related to radiofrequency energy when operating at ultra-high fields.

Yi Wang, PhD

Email: yiwang613 at gmail.com
Yi received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Dr. Dennis Parker’s group at the University of Utah. The focus of her PhD research was in Advanced MR Imaging for Structural and Functional Analysis. Yi also has a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland at Baltimore. After joining LOFT, Yi has been working on the development of advanced ASL techniques on the latest Siemens Skyra system as well as applications for perfusion imaging of body organs such as kidney, breast and myocardium.
Yi is now working as a Scientist for Philips Healthcare, USA

Songlin Yu, MD PhD

Email: yslyxh83 at yahoo.com.cn
Dr. Yu is a neurosurgeon trained in Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China under the supervision of Professor Jizong Zhao. His research has been focused on the evaluation of novel perfusion and MR angiography (MRA) techniques in stroke and arteriovenous malformation (AVM), as well as the association between radiological evaluation and surgical findings.
Songlin is now working as a neurosurgeon in Beijing Tiantan Hospital

Kay Jann, PhD

Email: kay.jann@ini.usc.edu
Dr Jann is Assistant Professor of Research at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine USC. Dr. Jann received his PhD from the University Hospital of Psychiatry, Dept. of Psychiatric Neurophysiology, University of Bern, Switzerland and PostDoc training at University of Bern, Switzerland and at the Brain Mapping Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA. His PostDoc was awarded by an Advanced PostDoc fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation and SSMBS (Schweizer Stiftung für Medizinisch-Biologische Stipendien).
Dr Jann has a strong background in multimodal imaging, combining electrophysiological, functional and structural MRI methods. His research focus is on developing novel analytical approaches to characterize the brain’s functional organization in health and disease. He developed preprocessing and analysis techniques to identify epileptiform activity in patients with epilepsy from simultaneous EEG/fMRI recordings. He also spearheaded and validated functional connectivity computations based on Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) perfusion MRI and applied this technique in patients to show the associations in pathophysiological changes in functional connectivity strength and metabolic demand. He further is a core developer of the algorithms for complexity analysis of resting state fMRI data and its application to basic and clinical neuroscience.
Dr Jann actively collaborates with and advises national and international groups on ASL perfusion MR, functional connectivity as well as complexity analyses.

Kate Krasileva, BA

Email: Kate.Krasileva@ucsf.edu
Kate graduated from UCLA with a major in Psychology and a minor in Neuroscience. During her undergraduate time at UCLA, Kate’s research focused on adolescent and young adult development and psychopatholoy. Specifically, her projects were on social impairment in adolescent-onset schizophrenia and cognition in young adults with ADHD. At LOFT, she is working on the recruitment, data collection, and analysis for the NIH-funded project Pediatric Template of Brain Perfusion. She is now working as a research coordinator at UCSF.

Thomas Martin, PhD

Email: thomasmartin@mednet.ucla.edu
Thomas received his BS in Physics from Utah State University (USU) in Logan, UT. He joined the UCLA Biomedical Physics program as a graduate student in 2012. The research he is currently working on focuses on radial Dynamic MRI image acquisition and processing techniques for fMRI and DCE MRI, to improve the temporal and spatial resolution.
Thomas is continuing his PhD in Physics in Biology and Medicine (PBM) program at UCLA under the supervision of Dr. Kyung Sung.

Samantha J. Ma, PhD

Email: samantha.ma@siemens-healthineers.com
Samantha is a Post Doc MR Scientist in the Ultrahigh Field (UHF) Team at Siemens Healthineers. She completed her PhD under the guidance of Danny JJ Wang, and has experience in the optimization of MR techniques at 3T and 7T for clinical translation. She is actively working on the development of ASL for UHF, as well as applications of machine learning and statistical analysis for MRI in cerebrovascular diseases such as stroke, small vessel disease, and vascular cognitive impairment and dementia.

Jun Fang, MS

Email: fangjun0120@gmail.com
Jun received his MS in Electrical Engineering from UCLA. In the lab, he was working as Research Associate on Osirix plugins development for ASL research and data collection. Jun is responsible for the website maintenance and updating. He is now a software consultant focusing on Java web development. Clients includes Comcast and College Board.

Xin Lou, MD PhD

Email: louxin301@gmail.com
Dr. Lou obtained her PhD in Neuroradiology from the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Medical School in 2005, under the supervision of Prof. Youquan Cai. She has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Radiology, Chinese PLA General Hospital since 2008. Her research has been focused on the evaluation of perfusion and collateral image in stroke, multi-model MR research in hypertension, as well as high-resolution MR imaging of intracranial arthrosclerosis Plaque. She is now Professor of Radiology at the Department of Radiology, PLA General (301) Hospital in Beijing.

Hailing Wang, MS

Email: wanghailing2050@gmail.com
Hailing is a PhD candidate from the Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, under the supervision of Prof. Shimin Fu. She joined LOFT as a visiting graduate researcher in 2014. Her research focuses on the mechanism of face processing, in particular the role of attention on face processing, the perception of face emotion and gender. Her research includes behavioral test, event-related potential (ERP) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies. She is continuing her PhD study at the Department of Psychology, Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Xingfeng Shao, PhD

Email: xshao@ini.usc.edu
Dr. Shao is Assistant Professor of Research Radiology at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine USC. He received his B.S. degree in Engineering Physics at Tsinghua University (THU), Beijing in 2014, China and his Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering at USC in 2019. His research focuses on developing ASL sequences with high spatial/temporal resolution. Currently Dr. Shao is working on a novel MR pulse sequence and modeling algorithm to quantify the water exchange rate (kw) across the blood–brain barrier (BBB) without contrast, and to evaluate its clinical utility in a range of neurological disorders including cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), Alzheimer's Diseases (AD), etc. Dr. Shao is also working on high resolution 7T ASL to quantify layer-dependent CBF and obtain concurrent measurement of CBV, BOLD and CMRO2.

Kai Wang

Email: wang416@usc.edu
Education: B.S. Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, 2016. Projects: Applications of BART on server clusters. Kai Wang joined United Imaging in Shenzhen China in 2021.

Qinyang Shou

Email: qinyangs@usc.edu
Qinyang Shou received his Bachelor's Degree in Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai China and became a Ph.D. student at USC in Fall, 2019. His project is multi-band ASL sequence development and post-processing methods for pediatric neurodevelopment studies.

Chenyang Zhao

Email: zhao361@usc.edu
Chenyang Zhao received his B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Tianjin University and his M.S. in Biomedical Engineering (Medical Imaging & Imaging Informatics) from USC. He joined LOFT as a Master's student and currently is a PhD student. His research focuses on the development and evaluation of parallel RF transmission (pTx) at 7T and low-dose CT perfusion technology.

Yelong Shen, MD

Email: shenyelong1989@qq.com
Yelong is a visiting clinical fellow from School of Medicine, Shandong University. His training is in neuroradiology with research experience in arterial spin labeling MRI data in cerebrovascular disorders. He is working on clinical applications of ASL and 4D dynamic MRA.

Jasse Lamas, BS

Email: jesse.lamas@loni.usc.edu
Jesse received his bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from UC San Diego. During his undergraduate studies, he was involved in research that studied the ways in which different genes affect cellular aging. He has also worked as a mentor to high school and community college students who wish to pursue higher education degrees in STEM. His research interests include those that involve diseases of the aging brain.

Marlene Casey, MPH

Email: Marlene.Casey@loni.usc.edu
Marlene graduated from UCLA with a major in Sociology and a minor in Business Administration. She attended USC and received her Master’s in Public Health. Her research interests and experience include Diabetes, Ophthalmology and Nutrition research. She has also worked on projects with Maternal and Child Health issues and well as Health Promotion and Education programs. She joined Dr Wang’s team as a research coordinator for his neurological research studies in January of 2017.

Sayım GÖKYAR, PhD

Email: sayim.gokyar@loni.usc.edu
Sayim is a Cornell trained postdoctoral researcher working for the dissemination of UHF MRI technology by designing radiofrequency instruments. His research interests include MRI instrumentation, RF coils, implantable electronics, metamaterials, RF design, safety evaluation of implantable devices, and artificial intelligence for MR image processing. He obtained a B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees, all from electrical and electronics engineering in 2009, 2011 and 2018 respectively. Dr. Gokyar is a trainee member of ISMRM and also a reviewer of various journals including MRM, JMR, IEEE-Access, and IEEE TBME. He was a valedictorian of B.Sc., in 2009. He was awarded with a graduate level scholarship of The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBİTAK-BIDEB-2211), and he is a recipient of ISMRM Trainee (Educational) Stipend for the Annual Meeting in 2021. Sayim joined GE as a Senior MR Safety Scientist in Aug 2023.

Fanhua Guo, PhD

Dr. Fanhua Guo is a postdoctoral scholar at the LOFT, USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine USC. He received his B.S. degree in Biology at Jilin University, Changchun, China. And he received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience at the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. During his doctoral period, he mainly studied the neural mechanism of spatial attention and the neural mechanism of subconscious pathways.

Andres Saucedo, PhD

Dr. Andres Saucedo is postdoctoral scholar – research associate at LOFT, USC Stevens Institute of Neuroimaging and Informatics (INI) working with Dr. Danny J.J. Wang. He received bachelor of science degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as a PhD in Medical Physics from UCLA, where his thesis work focused on MRI reconstruction and MR spectroscopy and spectroscopic imaging (MRS/MRSI). His current research focus includes diffusion-weighted MRS, functional MRS at ultrahigh field of 7T, and both Cartesian and non-Cartesian MRSI. He is also involved in various clinical MRI/S projects.

Zidong Yang, MS

Zidong Yang received his B.Scs in Psychology and Neuroscience from Brandeis University and his research training from University College London in Brain Sciences. He joined LOFT as a PhD student in Sept 2023. His current research focuses on Cerebral Small Vessel Disease and the development and evaluation of Black Blood imaging techniques.

Steve Mendoza, MS

Steve Mendoza graduated with a MS in Biomedical Engineering from UCLA and joined the LOFT lab in fall 2023. He is interested in new algorithms to analyze black blood MRI for small cerebral blood vessel imaging. He is interested in the rigorous verification of population differences between different groups using high quality imaging data. He comes from a microscopy background where he was responsible for controlling advanced light microscopes.

Zixuan Liu, MS

Zixuan Liu is a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Southern California. She received her bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering at Southern Medical University in China. Pursuing her academic ambitions, Zixuan undertook a master's program at Johns Hopkins University. During her MS, she engaged in diverse projects, ranging from computational machine development to imaging processing. She became an active member of the LOFT lab at USC's Health Sciences Campus since August 2023. Her academic research interest is ASL sequencing in 7T MRI, under the supervision of Dr. Xingfeng Shao.

Brandon Ojogho, BS

Brandon Ojogho received undergraduate degree in Microbiology and Entrepreneurship at University of Washington. Currently, he is completing a Master’s degree at John’s Hopkins University in Biotechnology. His goal is to apply to an MD/PhD program in hopes of becoming a neurosurgeon as well as continuing to do research in various areas of neurobiology. Brandon is currently working as a part-time research assistant in LOFT on measuring BBB in athletes with concussion.

Zhifeng Chen, PhD

Email: Zhifeng.Chen@monash.edu
Dr. Zhifeng Chen was a Postdoctoral Scholar - Research Associate at Keck School of Medicine of USC, working with Dr. Lirong Yan. He joined Monash University as a research scientist in Sept 2022. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2010 from Shandong University, and Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 2017 from Zhejiang University. Prior to joining USC, he worked as a Research Fellow in Radiology at Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Chen’s research interests include image processing, medical imaging, in particular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), constrained sparsity image reconstruction, low rank, compressed sensing, parameter imaging, and deep learning image reconstruction.

Ru Zhang, PhD

Dr. Ru Zhang is a research specialist at the USC Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute, Keck School of Medicine USC. She earned her doctorate in Mathematical and Computational Cognitive Science in 2016 from Purdue University under the supervision of Dr. Ehtibar Dzhafarov. After graduation, Dr. Zhang joined Dr. James Townsend’s lab at Indiana University, Bloomington and then Dr. Matt Jones’ lab at University of Colorado, Boulder to continue her research in cognitive psychology. Dr. Zhang joined the field of neuroscience since 2019. From 2019 to 2022, she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Neurobehavioral Research directed by Dr. James Blair at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She used task-based fMRI technique to understand emotional and reinforcement learning processing of both typically developing youth and youth with clinical diagnoses such as conduct disorder. Dr. Zhang joined Dr. Kay Jann lab in LOFT in April 2022. She is conducting complexity analysis using resting state fMRI data to understand the neurobiology of ADHD.

Dilmini Wijesinghe, PhD

Dilmini Wijesinghe is a postdoctoral scholar – research associate at LOFT, USC institute of Neuroimaging and informatics (INI) working with Dr. Kay Jann. She received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka, and PhD in medical physics from Oakland University, Michigan. Prior to joining USC, she worked as a postdoctoral associate at Duke University. Dr. Wijesinghe’s research interests are mathematical modeling of cellular mechanotransduction, developing complexity measures of fMRI timeseries as a nonlinear dynamic biomarker and applications of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS).