PNRC Faculty and Staff - April 2009

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology

Mekibib Altaye is a biostatistician by training with B.s. degree in Statistics from Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia, M.S. degree in statistics from Oklahoma State University, USA and Ph.D. in biostatistics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. As a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Western Ontario he worked on problems that arise from analyzing correlated data focusing on inter-rater reliability and cluster randomization. Prior coming to Cincinnati, he worked as a biostatistician from 1999-2001 at the Center for Pediatric research, Children's Hospital of the King's Daughter, Norfolk VA. He came to Cincinnati Children's in 2001. His primary appointment is at the center for Epidemiology and Biostatistics and his current research interest includes construction of infant brain template and mixed effect modeling.

PNRC Assistant Director

Associate Professor of Radiology

Dr. DiFrancesco is a physicist with degrees from Carnegie-Mellon University (BS) and the University of Pittsburgh (MS, PhD). After 15 years of experience in the commercial sector developing medical devices, he joined the IRC in the fall of 2004 to take advantage of an opportunity to train for research in advanced MR imaging and analysis. Recent research activity has included the use of concurrent EEG and fMRI to detect functional correlates of spontaneous brain activity, the study of the neurocognitive effects of Lupus using fMRI, applyiing functional imaging to investigate attentional deficits arising from sleep restriction in adolescents, and assessing the impact of field strength on the quality of small animal brain imaging.

Scientific Director of the PNRC and CSRC

Professor of Radiology, Pediatrics, Otolaryngology, Biomedical Engineering, Neuroscience, and Physics

McLaurin Scholar in Pediatric Functional Neurosurgery

Scott Holland is a physicist by training with a B.S. degree (1980) in Physics from Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA. and M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1985) degrees in Engineering and Applied Science from Yale University. After a year (1985-86) as a Research Engineer with the Electromagnetic Sciences Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute (SRI International), Menlo Park, CA, Scott returned to the Yale School of Medicine as a post-doctoral fellow (1986-88) and later as an Assistant Professor (1988-94) of Diagnostic Radiology. He joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in 1994 as Associate Professor of Radiology and Pediatrics and served as Scientific Director of the Imaging Research Center at Children’s Hospital Medical Center until 2003. His research currently focuses on pediatric neuroimaging applications of MRI at high field; including perfusion MRI, functional MRI, microimaging of transgenic mice, and image processing methods.

Assistant Professor of Radiology

Dr. Schmithorst is a physicist by training with BS, MS, and PhD degrees from the University of Cincinnati. Schmithorst's thesis was on utilizing an ionizing radiation detector in digital projection radiography to separate bone from soft-tissue components using information from the penetration depth of the x-ray beam. Dr. Schmithorst joined the Imaging Research Center in the Fall of 1997. His current research interests include the investigation of central auditory processing deficits in children with unilateral sensorineural hearing loss using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the development of language function in children using fMRI, and white matter maturation in children's brains using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). Additionally, Dr. Schmithorst is interested in the further development of data-driven techniques such as Independent Component Analysis (ICA)for fMRI data analysis; as well as techniques such as structural equation modeling (SEM) or multivariate autoregressive modeling (MAR) for analysis of effective and functional connectivity.

PNRC Medical Director

Associate Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Psychology

Dr. Szaflarski completed his medical training (MD) at Collegium Medicum (Bydgoszcz) of the Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun/Poland in 1991, followed by a Ph.D. at the same institution in 1997 in the area of neuroembryology. Following completion of a neurology residency and later a fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Epilepsy at University of Cincinnati, Dr. Szaflarski launched his neuroimaging research career with an additional fellowship at the Medical College of Wisconsin in the laboratory of Dr. Jeffrey R. Binder, where he studied the basic methods of MRI acquisition and analysis.

Dr. Szaflarski's research focuses on different aspects of cortical plasticity in patients with epilepsy and stroke and he currently holds NIH funding for neuroimaging studies in each of these areas. After joining the faculty in the Department of Neurology, he worked on mapping of language and memory in healthy subjects and epilepsy patients. Future research directions include examining the effects of medication-resistant epilepsy and surgical intervention on language plasticity and the effects of various types of rehabilitation on language recovery after stroke. While working on these various projects, Dr. Szaflarski became interested in simultaneous neuroimaging with EEG and fMRI (EEG/fMRI). This technique allows localization of the blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) contrast changes in response to EEG events, e.g., epileptiform discharges (marker for seizures). After implementing this research technique in the Center for Imaging Research at UC, he is now helping to employ EEG/fMRI for research studies in the Philips 3 Tesla MRI Scanner located in the Imaging Research Center for use in a number of planned neuroimaging studies in children.

Dr. Jennifer Vannest, PhD

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics

Division of Neurology

Dr. Vannest completed her undergraduate education at the Ohio State University and continued there for her graduate work. Her PhD (2001) is in Linguistics, and her graduate training also included background in Cognitive Psychology, Neuropsychology and Speech and Hearing Sciences. As a postdoctoral fellow at University of Michigan and University of Rochester, Dr. Vannest was trained to use functional MRI to study the brain mechanisms underlying language skill. She came to Cincinnati Children's in 2006, and her current research makes use of functional MRI and behavioral testing to examine how epilepsy and neurodevelopmental disorders affect language function, both in terms of language skill and brain circuitry that supports it. These studies are designed with the goal of better treatment and educational strategies for children with these disorders.

Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Neurology

Dr. Xiang completed his PhD in The Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan in 1998 in magnetoencephalography (MEG). His graduate training also included background in neurophysiology, functional brain mapping, signal processing and computer programming language. Dr. Xiang's research focuses on clinical applications of MEG in pediatrics, particularly, high-frequency neuromagnetic signals originating from the human brain. MEG is a new tool for noninvasively measuring very weak magnetic signals. Newly developed high-sampling-rate MEG recording techniques allow the clinician/researcher to address questions that exceed the capabilities of traditional approaches. He also aims to develop new techniques to non-invasively localize seizure onset regions and ultimately avoid lengthy, costly, and risky invasive intracranial electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to find the abnormal epileptic regions requiring surgical removal.

Assistant Professor of Radiology

McLaurin Fellow in Pediatric Functional Neurosurgery

Dr. Weihong Yuan was trained in biomedical engineering and received his B. S. degree (1991) from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, and MS (1997) and Ph.D. (2000) from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Dr. Yuan came to the Imaging Research Center and started his neuroimaging post-doctoral fellowship training in April, 2004. In mid 2005, Dr. Yuan joined faculty of IRC/PNRC. Dr. Yuan’s current research interest is focused on diffusion tensor imaging in children with hydrocephalus. He is also interested in the application of various imaging technique (fMRI, DTI) in other pediatric patients, such as children with supratentorial tumor, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, spina bifida, etc.