I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology at the University of Minnesota. After receiving B.S. and B.A. degrees in Chemistry and Criminology & Law at the University of Florida, in 1997 I began my career in MRI physics and functional neuroimaging research by joining the lab of Drs. Richard Briggs and Bruce Crosson at the University of Florida as an undergraduate research assistant. I joined the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) at the University of Minnesota in 1998. Working with Drs. Xiaoping Hu and Kâmil Uğurbil, I received my Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences and Medical Physics from the University of Minnesota in 2003.
My research focuses on developing and integrating software and hardware for improving MRI image quality, resolution, and acquisition speed. I have been especially interested in the use of ultra-high magnetic fields to achieve these goals, having started my career working on one of the first 3 Tesla whole-body human scanners at the University of Florida in 1997, then moving to the University of Minnesota where I have had the opportunity to work on the most powerful whole-body human MRI scanners in the world, such as the first 7 Tesla (installed at CMRR in 1999) and the first and only 10.5 Tesla (installed at CMRR in 2014).
