Description of Research Expertise

The overall mission of my translational research program is to improve the diagnosis and treatment for young-onset and atypical neurodegenerative dementias. A major limitation for therapeutic trials in these disorders is that the gold-standard for diagnosis is neuropathological examination at autopsy. To address this problem, my lab (Penn Digital Neuropathology Lab) develops novel open-source digital image analysis tools to study gold-standard histopathology in an objective and reproducible manner with rigorous validation. My lab utilizes both innovative “wet-lab” human brain histology techniques and novel “dry-lab” digital image analysis methods and bioinformatics to integrate fine-grained measures of postmortem neuropathology with antemortem clincial data. My goal is to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers of disease progression that can serve as endpoints in treatment trials. The approach of my lab represents the blending of my training in two separate but complementary specialties of cognitive neurology and neuropathology.