Brain Image Computing (BrIC) Laboratory

Dr. Pallavi Tiwari is an assistant professor of Biomedical Engineering and the director of Brain Image Computing laboratory at Case Western Reserve University since 2016. She is also an associate member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dr. Tiwari finished her PhD from Rutgers University in 2012 and moved to Case Western Reserve as an assistant research professor. Her research interests lie in pattern recognition, data mining, and image analysis for automated computerized diagnostic, prognostic, and treatment evaluation solutions using radiologic imaging. She has been a recipient of Case-Coulter Translational awards from 2013 to 2015, and was twice nominated for NIH Director’s Early Independence Award. In 2015, She was named by the Government of India as one of 100 women achievers for making a positive impact in the field of Science and Innovation. She was selected as one of Crain’s Business Cleveland Forty under 40 in 2018. In 2020, she was awarded the J&J Women in STEM (WiSTEM2D) scholar award in Technology. She was recently awarded the Honorary Early Career Achievement Award by the Society for Imaging informatics in Medicine (SIIM). Her research is funded through the National Cancer Institute, Department of Defense, Johnson & Johnson, V Foundation Translational Award, Dana Foundation, State of Ohio, and the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Marwa Ismail joined BrIC lab in September 2017 as a postdoctoral scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Louisville in December 2016. Her Ph.D. research involved developing a computer-aided diagnostic system for autism diagnosis from multiple imaging modalities, such as structural and functional MRI. Prior to this, she received her master’s degree from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Cairo University, where her research involved studying nerve fiber tracking methodologies using diffusion tensor magnetic resonance imaging. Marwa’s current research is developing image analysis techniques for characterizing brain tumors for prognosis and evaluating response to treatment.   

Dr. Labbad was born and raised in Syria before his move to the United States with his family. His father, a retired professor of mathematics, has played a big role in his education. Dr. Labbad is a medical school graduate and had worked as a Clinical Manager before joining BRIC Laboratory as a Clinical Research Associate / Coordinator in November of 2021. Outside of work, Murad enjoys sports, traveling, and spending time with his friends and family. 

Dr. Kimia Tajik joined BrIC lab in April 2021 as a postdoctoral scholar. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Oregon State University in March 2021. In her Ph.D. thesis, she proposed a novel image encryption algorithm to balance image privacy and usability concerns in a cloud environment. Prior to this, she received her bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, where she worked on 3D reconstruction from endoscopic images and robust object localization by enforcing consistency between objects and scenes. Kimia’s current research is focused on prognostic and predictive models for brain tumors. She is interested in analyzing how enhancement of brain MRI data can improve deep learning-based models for medical image analysis.  

Ruchika is a graduate research assistant at BrIC lab. Her research focus is on developing machine learning and deep learning algorithms for processing MRI, and digitized tissue slides for precision oncology. She is currently working on finding correlations between histopathological phenotypes and radiomic features of Glioblastoma. Prior to joining Case, she was a research assistant under the supervision of Dr. Amit Sethi in the image processing and computer vision lab, at IIT Guwahati. There she developed a deep learning based generalized nuclear segmentation algorithm and also released a benchmark nuclear segmentation dataset encompassing multiple organs, patients and disease states. Her masters’ thesis was on analyzing molecular datasets pertaining to invasive ductal carcinoma to develop computational models for breast cancer heterogeneity detection. She is the recipient of the prestigious Common Wealth Scholarship. While not working, Ruchika likes to explore different places, cultures, and play chess.

Hyemin Um joined the BrIC lab as a graduate research assistant in August 2020. Her research focuses on developing radiomics-based as well as deep learning-based tools for improving diagnosis of confounding lesions and aiding with individualized treatment planning in patients with malignant brain tumors. She is currently researching techniques that leverage both multi-parametric and temporal imaging data to incorporate dynamic information into her machine learning models. Prior to joining the BrIC family at Case, she was a research assistant in Dr. Harini Veeraraghavan's lab at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. For her master's thesis, she developed and validated radiomic classifiers for glioblastoma in multi-centric datasets with the use of commonly known image preprocessing techniques. Outside of the lab, Hyemin enjoys drawing and being active through bike riding or yoga. 

Olivia Krebs joined the BrIC lab as a graduate research assistant in October 2021. Currently, her research aims to elucidate sex-based differences in glioblastoma prognosis using computational pathology. Olivia was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in Spring 2021. Her interests outside the lab include walking her dog, baking, and reading.

Ipsa Yadav is a graduate research assistant at the BrIC lab and is seeking her Masters Degree in Biomedical Engineering. Her research currently focuses on temporal deformation analysis and predicting the subsequent location of recurrence in Glioblastoma patients using machine learning and deep learning models. She earned her bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Mumbai and did her undergrad research in analyzing and classifying imaging patterns observed using Deep Learning models on medical imaging datasets. Her academic interests lie in expanding her research in medical image analysis, image processing, and artificial intelligence. When not working, she volunteers at the UN to fulfill the Sustainable Development Goal of providing equal and quality education for all and also believes that her Hogwarts acceptance letter got lost in the mail and is secretly a wizardess.

Rohan Bareja is a biomedical software engineer in the BrIC lab. He has a background in bioinformatics. In his previous role at Weill Cornell Medicine, he analyzed cancer sequencing datasets and focused on predicting pathways of mutated and cancer-related genes in ‘personalized genomes' of the patients. He also explored associations between mutational burden, expression outliers, gene fusions, and immune cell infiltration in multiple advanced cancer types. His research currently focuses on developing radiomic models using imaging, to predict tumor subtypes and survival. He is also interested in investigating imaging features, and explore the underlying molecular associations involving genes, pathways, and develop radio-genomic signatures to predict outcomes. Rohan likes autumn and loves to go to Vermont every year for its picturesque towns and do leaf-peeping.

Andres Sandino is a research intern at the BrIC lab. He is working on developing deep learning algorithms for automatic segmentation of distinct tumor hallmarks of Glioblastoma using digital histopathology. He is also seeking his Master's Degree in Biomedical  Engineering under the supervision of Dr. Eduardo Romero in the Computer Imaging and Medical Applications Laboratory, at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where his master's thesis is focused on finding out associations between radiologic patterns with histological information to characterize non-small cell lung cancer. He earned his bachelor's degree in Electronic Engineering at the Universidad Distrital and finished his undergrad research on the detection of clustered microcalcifications on mammograms. His research interests lie in discovering patterns in medical images through image analysis and artificial intelligence. Outside of research, Andres enjoys walking and bike riding. Cycling is his favorite sport.
 

Ashish Gupta - Post-doctoral Researcher, 2019-2020

Currently Data Scientist, Geotab, Ontario, Canada

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Sukanya Iyer, Masters Student, 2017 - 2020

Currently Research Scientist, Analogic Inc., Boston

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Niha Beig, Ph.D. student, 2015 - 2019 -

Currently Research Scientist, Tempus Labs, San Francisco, CA.

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Ramon Correa, BS-MS Student, 2017-2020

Currently Ph.D. Student, Emory University.

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Bolin Song, MS Student, 2017 - 2019 

Currently Ph.D. student at Case Western Reserve University.

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Kara Quaid, BS Student, 2016-2018

Currently Ph.D. student at Washington University in St. Louis.

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Prateek Prasanna, Ph.D Student, 2014-2017

Currently Assistant Professor, Stony Brook University, New York.

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Jhimli Mitra, Research Associate, 2015-2016 

Currently Research Scientist, GE Global Research.

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Jay Patel, BS Student, 2013-2016  

Currently Ph.D. student at MIT.

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Andrew Rose, BS Student, 2014-2016 

Currently Application Consultant, BrainLab.

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Benjamin Jiang, Visiting Researcher, 2015

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Gagandeep Singh, Visiting Researcher, 2013 - 2017 

Currently, Radiology Resident, RWJ Medical School.