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Faculty
Dr. Michael W. Weiner
Director, CIND
Professor of Medicine, Radiology, & Psychiatry, UCSF
Norbert Schuff, Ph.D.
Professor of Radiology, UCSF
 Dr. Dieter J. Meyerhoff
Professor
Dr. Meyerhoff received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Westfaelische-Wilhelms-Universitaet in Muenster, Germany. He completed his postdoctoral training in NMR spectroscopy at the University of California, Berkeley and then joined the Department of Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco in 1987.
Dr. Meyerhoff has been investigating the effects of substance abuse (alcohol, cocaine, tobacco) on the brains of treatment-seeking and community-based populations, using various in-vivo MR methods and cognitive testing. His primary focus is on the neurobiological recovery from brain injury in abstinent alcoholics, under special consideration of the comorbid effects of chronic smoking. Other research areas include neuroimaging of HIV infection, posttraumatic stress disorder, and Gulf War syndrome.
Gerald W. Matson, Ph.D.
Facilities Manager, CIND
Adjunct Professor, UCSF
Dr. Matson received his Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of Wisconsin, and did postdoctoral training in NMR at UCSB. He oversaw the running of the NMR facility at UCSF from 1976 to 1978, and then moved to UCD as the Operations Manager of the UCD NMR Facility. In 1986 he joined Michael Weiner at the VA and UCSF. Dr. Matson has primarily been involved in technique development, and his interests include probe development, RF pulse development, and sequence development for spectroscopy and imaging.
Karl Young, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor (UCSF)
Dr. Young received his Ph. D in Physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz, working with Dr. James Crutchfield on classification of nonlinear dynamical systems. In his Ph.D. research and as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, Dr. Young developed quantitative measures for estimation of the intrinsic complexity of nonlinear systems from observed time series, using techniques from theoretical computer science and establishing rigorous bounds on estimation and prediction for observed systems. As a postdoctoral researcher at NASA Ames he was instrumental in demonstrating that a diffusion model with a simple threshold nonlinearity (the “dripping handrail” model) provided a better characterization of accretion in binary star systems than current models and was uniquely able to properly predict all characteristics of the X-Ray time series generated by such systems (e.g. quasiperiodic oscillations and low frequency noise). As a staff scientist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) he helped to develop large scale simulations of the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) that were critical in the latter stages of its design. At UCSF he has developed statistical, optimization, and image processing algorithms that have provided the ability to perform large scale statistical analysis of MR spectroscopic imaging data. Currently his main focus is on developing multi-modal MR imaging biomarkers based on spatial complexity estimation and applying data mining techniques to these and other biomarkers in attempts to establish useful diagnostic measures for neurodegenerative disease.
Linda L. Chao, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor of Radiology and Psychiatry
Dr. Chao received her PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California at Davis. Her doctoral research focused on the role of the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in working memory. Dr. Chao then went on to complete an intramural research training award (IRTA) fellowship at the National Institute of Mental Health where she was part of the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. Her work there consisted of several Positron Emission Tomography and functional MRI studies investigating the neural basis of semantic memory. Dr. Chao joined to the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Disease and Department of Radiology at UCSF in 2001. Her primary area of research focuses on combining neuropsychological and imaging techniques to characterize how normal aging and neurodegenerative processes affect cognitive processes such as memory and attention. Other research areas include neuroimaging of posttraumatic stress disorder and Gulf War syndrome.
Susanne Müller, M.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor
Dr Mueller received her MD from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. Her doctoral thesis focused on the diagnostic and prognostic value of the super-selective amobarbital test. During her training in the Department of Neurology at the University Hospital Zurich, Dr Mueller became involved in research collaboration with the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, which focused on the measurement of GABA in epileptic patients. For this work, she received the 1999 Young Investigator Award of the International League against Epilepsy. To pursue this line of research further, she came to the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases on a scholarship of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Dr Mueller is currently Assistant Adjunct Professor of the Department of Radiology, UCSF.
Dr Mueller’s research interests focus on high field neuroimaging for epilepsy (focus identification and characterization of extrafocal structural and metabolic abnormalities) and dementia (early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, influence of disease modifying factors, e.g. traumatic brain injury, white matter lesions on the expression of the typical neuroimaging features of Alzheimer’s disease).
 Ashish Raj, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor of Radiology, UCSF
Dr. Raj earned a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, NY, USA. At Cornell he specialized in signal processing and wrote his dissertation on new computational algorithms for MR imaging, working closely with the department of radiology at Weill-Cornell Medical College in New York. This work led to the development of new techniques for reconstructing and processing MR images using prior or redundant information. After graduating in December 2004, he joined the Centre for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Department of Radiology at UCSF, where he is an Assistant Adjunct Professor.
Dr. Raj is generally interested in computational problems in medical imaging. His recent work has focused on the reconstruction of MR images from partially obtained data and on removing motion and other artifacts that currently limit MR applications. He recently presented a new Bayesian graph-theoretic algorithm called EPIGRAM for reconstructing highly under-sampled data using prior knowledge. Looking forward, Dr. Raj envisages the development of ultra-fast imaging methods for structural, perfusion, diffusion and functional MRI using his current algorithmic work as a foundation.
Colin Studholme, Ph.D.
Associate Professor in Residence, UCSF
Dr Studholme has a Bachelors degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, a Masters degree in Satellite Remote Sensing and Image Processing from Edinburgh University and received a PhD from the University of London working as part of the computational imaging sciences group at Guys Hospital. He has worked in image processing research in various areas since 1990. Before his PhD, he worked for the Marconi company, the British Antarctic Survey, the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment and has worked on projects for Philips Medical Systems during his graduate studies. His doctoral work focused on the development of robust similarity criteria for multi-modality medical image registration, with applications in multi-modality imaging and neurosurgery planning and guidance. Following his PhD he was a Postdoctoral fellow from 1998 at the Image Processing and Analysis Group at Yale University, where he carried out work on MRI geometric distortion correction and image fusion with application to planning Epilepsy surgery. He moved to UCSF as faculty in 2000 and was awarded a Whitaker biomedical Engineering grant in 2001. His research at UCSF focuses on image analysis methods for computational neuroanatomy, with funded research projects from NIMH and NINDS.
Randall Rule, Ph.D.
Assistant Adjunct Professor
Dr. Rule received his doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California Berkeley. His doctoral research focused on the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in emotional and social behavior. He completed postdoctoral training in MRI and MR Spectroscopy at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. In 2003 he joined the Department of Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Rule's primary research focus has been on the relationship between brain abnormalities observed sickle cell disease and the cognitive deficits observed associated with this disease. This is being accomplished by using neuroimaging techniques such as MRI MR spectroscopy and MR perfusion in combination with neuropsychological testing.
Dr. Rule is also involved in research to identify brain changes in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) both within the motor cortex and in other brain areas that might be useful as specific markers for diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring.
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