About Me
I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. I work with Dr. Sarang Joshi, Associate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Utah and Dr. Bill Salter, Chief of Medical Physics and Director of Radiation Oncology at the Huntsman Cancer Institute.
Postdoctoral Research
I am currently focusing on incorporating breathing induced organ-motion into radiation therapy for abdominal tumors. My work involves the quantification and stochastic characterization of patient-specific breathing patterns and the computation of stochastic radiation dose depositions resulting from organ movement due to stochastic breathing patterns. Our goal is to predict the range of expected radiation dose to both tumor lesions and normal tissue in response to patient breathing.
Doctoral Research
I completed my Ph.D. in May 2008 under the supervision of my advisor, Dr. Mike Kirby. For my doctoral work, I applied stochastic modeling techniques to perform uncertainty and sensitivity analysis of cardiac electrophysiological systems. For the forward problem of electrocardiography, I identified heart movements capable of masking or mimicking heart distress as read by the ECG. In addition, I identified the organ conductivities that produce the greatest effect on torso potentials. In the field of ion channel modeling, I quantified the effects of uncertainties in kinetic rate coefficients upon activation and deactivation channel currents. Moreover, I studied the inverse problem of determining statistics of rate coefficients when fit to stochastic channel currents.