I am an Assistant Professor on the Physician Scientist Investigator (Tenure) Track at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, and I clinically practice in the Nuclear Medicine Section. I was recruited to VUMC by my home department and the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center (VMAC) to build a positron emission tomography (PET) research program to develop and validate novel, clinically translatable applications of existing and emerging PET tools to better diagnose and monitor diseases adversely affecting cognition and aging.

I received my MD (2016) and PhD (2013) degrees in Vanderbilt University’s NIH-funded Medical Scientist Training Program. I was a member of Dr. Tricia Thornton-Wells’ Imaging-Genetics Laboratory. My dissertation focused on using neuroimaging biomarkers for gene-gene interaction analyses in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). I developed a strong foundation in computational human genetics, genetic pathophysiology of AD, and structural neuroimaging analysis. Before returning to clinical medicine, I was a post-doctoral fellow in Dr. Bennett Landman’s laboratory (2013-2014), where I further refined my computational skills developing simulations of imaging data to vet imaging genetics software. During my remaining clinical years at Vanderbilt, I worked with Dr. Timothy Hohman in a part-time post-doctoral capacity at VMAC (2014-2017) studying genetic influences on sex differences in AD using MRI and pathologic biomarkers of disease.

I completed diagnostic radiology residency at Stanford University and pursued a pathway for dual board certification in both diagnostic radiology (expected fall 2022) and nuclear medicine (board certified December 2021). At Stanford, my research focused on clinical fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), amyloid, and tau neuro-PET imaging. With Dr. Beth Mormino, I created and validated a protocol for interpreting tau neuro-PET images for clinicians. I assisted Drs. Greg Zaharchuk and Guido Davidzon with machine learning research to optimize low-dose PET modalities. I also served as an expert reader of FDG, amyloid, and tau neuro-PET images.

In 2021, I joined the VUMC faculty and began building my research program developing and validating novel, clinically translatable applications of existing and emerging PET tools to better diagnose and monitor diseases adversely affecting cognition and aging. Given my past research focus, I became interested in understanding the brain health trajectory of the older patients undergoing treatment for systemic cancer that I see in my clinical practice. I discovered there are over 20,000 individuals with cancer who have had over 40,000 longitudinal FDG PET scans during their cancer treatment journey at VUMC, and all of them include images of the brain. I have received funding from the Alzheimer’s Association to begin exploring this dataset in patients with Head and Neck Cancer. I plan to leverage this and other large PET cohorts throughout my physician-scientist career to explore the brain health of older adults with cancer.