Our Team

Principal investigator

Rajat (Raj) Dhar, MD, FRCPC

Rajat (Raj) Dhar, MD, FRCPC

Professor of Neurology

Research bio
Clinical bio

Originally from Delhi, India, Raj Dhar, MD studied in the Arts & Sciences program at McMaster University from 1994 to 1997, having received the National Canada scholarship. He remained in Canada and entered McMaster University School of Medicine, graduating in 2000. In 2005, he completed his neurology residency at the University of Western Ontario. During this time he taught a course for medical students on Neurological Emergencies and received the Teaching Honor Roll Award of Excellence. From 2005-2007, he was a fellow in Neurological Critical Care at Washington University School of Medicine under Michael Diringer, MD.

For his cutting-edge research applying PET imaging to study brain physiology after subarachnoid hemorrhage, he was awarded the Best Scientific Abstract Award in 2008 and 2010 from the Neurocritical Care Society. He received an American Heart Association Scientist Development Grant and then a KL2 grant.In 2017, he was the recipient of a K-23 career development award from the NINDS to study Prediction and Genetics of Cerebral Edema after Hemispheric Stroke.

Currently, Dhar is a Professor of Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis and an Attending Physician in the Neurology/Neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He is certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology in Vascular Neurology and from the United Council of Neurological Subspecialties in Neurocritical Care. He currently serves as Chair of the Scientific Committee for the annual meeting of the Neurocritical Care Society and Chair of the Organ Donation Research Council.

Personnel

Yasheng Chen, DSc

Yasheng Chen, DSc

Associate Professor of Neurology

Research bio

Yasheng Chen studied in China before obtaining his doctorate at Washington University in St. Louis. He was a research fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before returning to Washington University and becoming a major collaborator with our lab. His research focuses on multimodal image and big data analyses and biomedical computing techniques.

Education:

  • BS Biomedical Engineering: Tianjin Univ., Tianjin, P.R. China
  • MS Biophysics: Inst. Of Biophysics, Academia Sinica, P.R. China
  • MS Electrical Engineering: Washington University in St. Louis, MO
  • DSc Biomedical Engineering: Washington University in St. Louis, MO
Julien Cifarelli, BS

Julien Cifarelli, BS

Neuro Imaging Research Technician II

Julien Cifarelli recently completed his undergraduate degree obtaining a BS in Biological Sciences at Webster University St. Louis. During his undergraduate studies he participated in bladder cancer research and genetics studies. While seeking medical school enrollment, he maintained his interest in medical research by becoming a Neuro Imaging Technician in the Stroke Imaging Lab.  Julien currently manages image transfer, analysis, and data organization in SNIPR.

Atul Kumar, MBBS, DRE

Atul Kumar, MBBS, DRE

Senior Neuroimaging Engineer

After completing his medical education, Atul Kumar pursued a research career in medical technology. He has several years of research experience in applying computer vision, image processing, machine learning, and computational geometry to solve medical image problems. He is currently working on developing algorithms for identifying various biomarkers in brain images of stroke patients.

Education:

  • MBBS – Patna Medical College, Patna, India
  • MMST – Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India
  • DRE – Cleveland State University, Cleveland , Ohio
Jane Yuan, BSc, MD

Jane Yuan, BSc, MD

Neurosurgery resident

Jane Yuan is an incoming neurosurgery PGY-1 resident at Washington University (WUSM) who has spent the last few years in the Zipfel and Dhar lab’s researching various translational and clinical aspects of subarachnoid hemorrhage. This has included spearheading a project to develop and validate a novel automated assessment of cerebral edema and early brain injury as well as currently completing a project developing automated tools to measure hemorrhage volume.

Education:

  • MSCI – Washington University School of Medicine
  • Medical School – Washington University School of Medicine
Porche Braun, BSN

Porche Braun, BSN

Neurocritical Care Research Nurse

Porche Braun is an experienced intensive care nurse who joined the neuro-ICU research group as lead research coordinator, overseeing prospective clinical trials and other clinical research projects.

Education:

  • Undergraduate — Bachelor of Arts in Biology, Drury University
  • Bachelor of Science in Nursing, Maryville University
Keshav Jayaraman, BSc

Keshav Jayaraman, BSc

Medical Student

Jayaraman is a medical student at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM) and engages in clinical, bench and health policy research as it relates to cerebrovascular disease. He is particularly interested in neuroimaging technology and biomarkers for subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), stroke and vascular malformations of the brain. He joined the Dhar Lab shortly before medical school and is involved with the research and development of machine learning-centered approaches for automating the assessment of CT biomarkers of SAH. Jayaraman is interested in pursuing a career in endovascular neurosurgery and will be spending a dedicated research year investigating neurovascular imaging biomarkers.

Education:

  • Undergraduate – Washington University in St. Louis, B.A in Biology
  • Medical School – Washington University School of Medicine, MD Candidate
Zohair Siddiqui, BSc

Zohair Siddiqui, BSc

Medical Student

Siddiqui is a medical student at St. Louis University School of Medicine with a research interest in clinical informatics. As an undergraduate at St. Louis University, he has worked on precision medicine software, along with the development of a blood chimerism calculation tool for the monitoring of post-HSCT leukemia patients (“Rchimerism”). His work at the Dhar lab focuses on automated extraction of large vessel occlusions (LVOs) from medical record text reports of stroke patients using natural language processing. He is also involved with the application of radiomics software to better understand hemorrhagic transformation. Siddiqui is a St. Louis native, and in his free time he enjoys spending time with family and friends, trying out new restaurants, and spending time outdoors.

Education:

  • Undergraduate – BS Computer Science, St. Louis University
  • Medical School – St. Louis University School of Medicine (class of 2023)
Arjun Anand

Arjun Anand

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Arjun is an undergraduate student at Washington University in St Louis studying for a bachelor’s in Neuroscience with plans to attend medical school. He was born in Toronto, Canada, to Indian parents and decided he wished to pursue his education after high school in the United States. Arjun is currently working on data management tools for SNIPR while also creating pipelines and code to analyze longitudinal lab and vitals data from the EHR on stroke patients. His interests include Curling, which he has played competitively since 9th grade, and volunteering abroad in third world countries!

Education:

  • High School – Crestwood Preparatory College, Toronto, ON
  • Undergraduate – Washington University in St. Louis (2021-present), major in Biochemistry
Autumn Xu

Autumn Xu

Undergraduate student

Autumn is majoring in Computer Science and Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. She is more than excited to explore technical solutions in clinical setting. Her project is working to make new data types to hold scan information and streamline the mass analysis process for such imaging data.

Past personnel

Michelle Allen

Neurocritical Care Research Nurse

Allen was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, growing up there until Undergraduate school brought her to St. Louis where she was resided ever since. She managed all acute clinical trials out of the Neurology Intensive Care Unit at Barnes-Jewish Hospital for several years, including complex ICU-based physiologic PET studies. She began working on the Stroke Edema and Subarachnoid Hemorrhage projects with Dhar from the start, initially the main work-force evaluating each CT, converting them to appropriate form, and then identifying stroke and masking each lesion to be put into AI pipeline. She is married and has two young sons.

Education:

  • Undergraduate — Saint Louis University School of Nursing (2005-2009)
    • Bachelor of Science in Nursing, cum laude
    • Critical Care Certificate

Kunal Bhatia, MD, MBBS

Clinical Fellow in Neurocritical Care

Kunal Bhatia is originally from New Delhi, India where he completed his undergraduate and post-graduate education subsequently before moving to the US for further training. He is a neurocritical care fellow at Washington University in St. Louis and started working in Dhar’s lab shortly after joining the department in 2020. His research interests include hemorrhagic transformation in acute ischemic patients – quantification and association with functional outcomes, hematoma expansion in intracerebral hemorrhage, and vasospasm in subarachnoid hemorrhage. Bhatia is interested in pursuing a career as an academic clinician in the future.

Education:

  • MBBS – Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi, India
  • MD Medicine – Vardhman Mahavir Medical College and Safdarjung Hospital, New Delhi, India
  • Residency – Department of Neurology, University of Missouri-Columbia

Currently:
Assistant Professor in Neurology at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

Grace Carey

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Carey grew up in California and has been swimming competitively since she was six years old. She now swims at the collegiate level, attending the NCAA championships and being awarded a Scholar All-American in 2020. She is majoring in cognitive neuroscience.

Education:

  • High School – Polytechnic High School, Pasadena, CA
  • Undergraduate – Washington University in St. Louis (2018-present), major Cognitive Neuroscience

Currently:
Research Associate, Chai Laboratory at the USC School of Dentistry, Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology

Aaron Corbin, BSc, MD

Medical Student

Corbin is a medical student at Saint Louis University School of Medicine. His current interests are in vascular and critical care neurology and has joined the Dhar Lab his second year of medical school. He is involved with assessing the caliber between cerebral edema biomarkers, net-water-uptake and CSF volumetrics.

Education:

  • Undergraduate – Virginia Commonwealth University BS in Biomedical Engineering and BS in Chemistry
  • Medical School – Saint Louis University School of Medicine, MD Candidate

Currently:
Resident in internal medicine at the Ohio State University

Hossein Mohammadian Foroushani, MSc, PhD

PhD Student

Foroushani is a graduate research assistant in Mallinckrodt institute of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine, USA. He has closely been working with Dhar in applications of deep learning in stroke research and edema dynamic. Foroushani has expertise in cutting-edge AI technology including machine learning, deep learning and statistical modeling and their applications in genomics and medical image analysis. Foroushani is interested in pursuing a career in imaging genomics to identify imaging, genomics and epigenomics markers for diagnosis, prognosis, and drug response prediction for neurological diseases. Foroushani enjoys camping, playing piano, doing yoga and reading books on psychology.

Education:

  • MS – Washington University in St. Louis, Engineering Data Analytics and Statistics
  • MS – Washington University in St. Louis, Electrical Engineering
  • PhD candidate – Washington University in St. Louis, Electrical Engineering

Currently:
Postdoctoral scientist in deep learning at AbbVie

Isabella Gonzalez

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Born in Miami, Florida to Colombian parents, Isabella has grown up her entire life in the island of Key Biscayne until Undergraduate school brought her to St. Louis. She currently works in the Dhar Laboratory analyzing, checking, and fixing master exclusions/inclusions for data as she gets started as a new member of the lab.

Education:

  • Highschool — Coral Gables Senior High School (2014-2018) receiving an International Baccalaureate Diploma as well as the Superintendent’s Diploma of Distinction graduating top 2% of her class with a 4.0/4.0 GPA
  • Undergraduate — Washington University in St. Louis (2018-2022) Currently a second semester freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences major in Cognitive Neuroscience with a double minor in Spanish and Musical Theatre

Ali Hamzehloo, MD

Research Associate

Originally from Arak, Iran and then moving to Tehran, Iran, Hamzehloo has practiced as an interventional neurologist since 2010. He began working as research fellow in department of vascular neurology at St. Louis University School of Medicine in 2016 until 2018. He finally joined the Dhar Lab near the end of November 2018. He is interested in neuroimaging (CT’s, MRI’s, PET, fMRI, SPECT’s) as well as interventional neuroradiology. Ali has a widespread experience in clinical research in cerebrovascular disease and neuroimaging. After his time in the lab, he pursued a clinical stroke fellowship at Wayne State University. He is now starting a neurology residency at HCA northwest in Florida. Outside of work, he enjoys reading literature and history books but most of all, spending his time with his amazing wife and son.

Education:
Hamzehloo attended Tehran University of Medical Science School of Medicine in Tehran/Iran. He then proceeded to complete his Neurology residency in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Isfahan, Iran. Finally, he did a fellowship in Interventional Neuroradiology in Zurich, Switzerland.

Currently:
Neurology resident  at HCA Florida Westside Hospital

June He, MS

Statistical Data Analyst

Current position: Statistical Data Analyst, Department of Anesthesiology

Originally from China, June He has been working as a research scientist in medical and biological fields. Currently, she is cooperating with Clinicians on all kinds of data. June’s duties include data cleaning, filtering, and statistics analysis with all kinds of statistic software. Her major aim is to study edema dynamic stimulation and develop CSF Trajectory Modeling by conducting cohort study across thousands of patients. June is evaluating the predictive value of the combination of different markers including genetic genotype by complex statistics methods. June hopes that her modeling an help the clinicians in making better clinical decisions in the future.

Education:

  • Bachelor of Medicine — Tongji Medical University, P.R. China
  • Master of Science — Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Genetic Engineering, Wuhan Institute of Biological Products Ministry of Public Health, P.R. China
  • Master of Science — Biostatics Genetic Pathway (ongoing), Division of Biostatics in the School of Medicine at Washington University, Saint Louis, MO

Currently:
Statistical Data Analyst in Clinical Research, Anesthesiology