Our People

Self-motion perception and adaptability of vestibular perception

Photodynamic therapy and medical image processing

Understanding the health of children with medical complexity including children with IDD in a family context. He is studying the family, community, and health system factors that support family and caregiver resilience to better understand these children’s quality of life and healthcare utilization.

Includes ischemic and hemorrhagic stroke, brain aneurysms, cranial and spinal vascular malformations, moyamoya disease, and carotid atherosclerosis. He offers patients both endovascular and open microsurgical treatments for cerebrovascular disease.

Includes open cerebrovascular and endovascular treatment for spinal and cerebrovascular disease including stroke, aneurysms, AVMs, carotid/vertebral disease and trigeminal neuralgia.

Focuses upon neurologic disorders in resource-limited tropical settings.

High-density electrophysiology and Magnetic Resonance Imaging to investigate neural correlates in rare genetic neurodevelopmental diseases such as Batten disease and Rett syndrome.

Flexible allocation of the brain’s limited processing resources in attention, perception, and working memory

Basic neurophysiology of schizophrenia and autism

Identifing molecular regulators of long-range trafficking of protein cargoes to distinct sub-domains of polarized cells, such as neurons

Mechanisms supporting conceptual processing, language, and action function in patients with brain tumor or epilepsy.

Medical, Graduate, and Undergraduate Education

Understanding the neural mechanisms that mediate sensation and action with our hands.

Basal ganglia and degenerative diseases

Basic biological mechanisms of circadian synchrony and entrainment in health and disease. Understanding how circadian rhythms and sleep can enhance glymphatic, neuronal, and cerebrovascular function.

Imaging Sciences

Cochlear Neurodegeneration

Investigating if/how the production of rapid, coordinated movements requires control circuitry that can bypass sensory feedback delays by providing an estimate of the consequences resulting from a motor command.

Understanding the mechanisms by which the extracellular matrix protein, fibronectin, affects cell and tissue functions that are critical for wound repair. We study both the structural mechanisms and intracellular signaling events that mediate cell and tissue responses to matrix fibronectin. In turn, we are using this information to develop novel technologies for tissue engineering, and therapeutic approaches to promote tissue regeneration in chronic wounds.

Synaptic pharmaco-physiology of vestibular efferent-afferent interactions

Programmed Cell Death (PCD) in cardiovascular disease (CVD). While great progress has been achieved in the unveiling of the molecular mechanisms of PCD, a new level of complexity, with important therapeutic implications, has begun to emerge. I am particularly interested in Pyroptosis, a highly inflammatory form of lytic PCD, and Ferroptosis, a form of PCD involved in metabolic imbalance and the perturbation of redox homeostasis.

In both pediatric epilepsy and general child neurology.

Visual perceptual alterations in psychosis,  behavioral psychophysics, eye-tracking, functional neuroimaging.

To ameliorate the symptoms of cancer and its treatment by leveraging an understanding how the brain processes the state of the body.

Peripheral nerve regeneration/degeneration and vascularized composite allotransplantation.

Optimizing the understanding, diagnosis and treatment of movement disorders with the use of neurophysiological techniques, and developing sustainable international collaborations that promote global equity in neurological education, research and patient care.

Pediatric neuromuscular disorders

Clinical interests in dizziness/vertigo (Meniere’s disease, vestibular neuronitis, benign paroxysmal positional vertigo/BPPV).

Investigation of the molecules, receptors, and neural circuits that influence social interactions, including the actions of mammalian pheromones

Key areas of clinical specialization and research have included Neuroimaging, Head and Neck imaging, Musculoskeletal MRI, MR and CT angiography.

Carbohydrate and protein recognition, molecular design, and biomolecular sensing

College-age adults with intellectual disabilities

The neural computations that enable the perception of natural sounds, such as speech and music

Cortical Circuitry Underlying Memory-Guided Sensory Decisions

Pathologists' Assistant (ASCP), Forensic and Biological Anthropologist, Coroner

Using primarily human pluripotent stem cell models, we examine astrocyte development in normal and pathological conditions, the role of astrocytes in modulating response to injury or stress, the role of altered RNA processing and translation in neural development, and the utility of glial precursor cells and their astrocytic progeny for cell transplantation therapy.

Neuroimaging, epilepsy, concussion, performance validity testing, and statistics. Current research involves sub-classification of seizure syndromes based on neuropsychological and quantitative MRI findings.

Multisensory integration, social neuroscience and autism spectrum disorder

Visual Perception

Chronic illness, Palliative Care, Long-term childhood cancer survivors, Bereavement, Integrative medicine, Biofeedback, Chronic pain, Bioethics

Impairments of perceptual function and organization in schizophrenia and other neuropsychiatric disorders, their relationship to symptom emergence (e.g., in terms of altered predictive coding, or altered contextual modulation) and the possibility of performing visual remediation of low- and mid-level visual disturbances in these conditions.

Exploring the understudied and novel mechanisms by which neuromodulators mediate the interactions between neurons, astrocytes, and microglia in both normal and disease states

Use virtual reality (VR), multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and machine learning to elucidate the psychological and neural signatures of psychopathologies

Novel technologies, practice-based research, and palliative care in individuals with Parkinson disease and other movement disorders

Retinal degeneration and maladaptive plasticity in inner retinal circuits.

Schizophrenia, with a particular interest in the pathophysiology of positive symptoms

Clinical applications of advanced neuroimaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI), MR Spectroscopy (MRS), Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), morphometry, Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) and Dynamic Susceptibility Contrast (DSC)