Current Members
- Faculty
- Staff
- Research Fellows
- Graduate Students
- Professional Trainees
- Undergraduate Trainees
- Affiliated Faculty
Faculty
Walter Witschey, PhD
Associate Professor of Radiology
witschey@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
215-662-2310
Dr. Witschey is an Associate Professor of Radiology and member of the Bioengineering and Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Graduate Groups at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the recipient of the 2011 NIH/NIBIB Pathway to Independence Award, 2014 McCabe Foundation Award, and 2016 W.W. Smith Foundation Award. He was a former trainee in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Penn and finished his postdoctoral training in Bioengineering at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany. The research goals of his group include non-invasive imaging of myocardial ischemia progression and salvage, innovative technologies for imaging arrhythmias, and MR-guided interventions for heart disease.
Victor Ferrari, MD
Professor of Medicine; Professor of Medicine in Radiology; Chair, Penn Cardiovascular Imaging Council, Depts. of Medicine, Radiology, and Penn Cardiovascular Institute
I focus strongly on a collaborative approach to care with my patients, advocating for them, and educating them regarding their disorders. I emphasize an active and joint approach to managing their conditions, and blend state-of-the-art care with a humanistic approach. I practice many areas of cardiology, including coronary artery disease, valvular heart disease, and preventive care. I also see patients with rare disorders such as Marfans disease, HHT (Osler-Weber-Rendu), Friedreich's Ataxia, and Fabry's disease. I will shortly complete LGBT training and offer cardiovascular care in this area.
Hersh Sagreiya, MD
Assistant Professor of Radiology
Physician-scientist, with clinical work in Abdominal Imaging and research in Informatics and Machine Learning.
Harold I. Litt, MD, PhD
Professor of Radiology; Chief, Cardiothoracic Imaging Division; Chief, Cardiovascular Imaging Section; Director, Center for Advanced Computed Tomography Imaging Services
Paco Bravo, MD
Assistant Professor of Radiology; Director of Nuclear Cardiology; Nuclear Medicine Modality Chief; Vice-Chair for the Radiation Research Safety Committee (RRSC); Chair for Nuclear Cardiology Governance; Co-Director of the Cardiovascular Phenotyping Unit, Center for Human Phenomic Science (CHPS)
I have a particular interest in the complementary role of radionuclide molecular imaging techniques and tissue characterization with contrast-enhanced cardiac magnetic resonance imaging for sub-clinical detection, phenotyping, diagnosis, and risk stratification of individuals with various forms of cardiomyopathy.
Staff
Slimane Tounekti, PhD
Senior Research Investigator
Dr. Slimane Tounekti is a Senior Research Investigator in the Department of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, having joined the lab in late 2024. He earned his PhD from Claude Bernard University, France, in 2019. Following this, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the MGH/HMS Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston before serving as a Senior Research Associate at the JIMRIC Lab at Thomas Jefferson University. His research focuses on studying and characterizing central nervous system connectivity and microstructure using diffusion-weighted Magnetic Resonance Imaging (DWI).
Currently, he is developing and applying methods for downfield spectroscopy at Ultra-high field (UHF) to identify and quantify metabolites with downfield peaks, such as tryptophan and NAD+. Additionally, he is working on implementing novel AI-based acquisition and reconstruction methods for cardiac imaging. Dr. Tounekti's expertise includes developing and implementing MR pulse sequences, optimizing acquisition, data reconstruction, and advancing data analysis techniques.
Research Fellows
Neil Chatterjee, MD, PhD
Research Fellow
Neil Chatterjee is a research track resident in diagnostic radiology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He completed his MD/PhD at Northwestern in 2018 with a focus on cardiovascular perfusion MRI, but these days his interests are focused below the diaphragm. He will be doing a body imaging fellowship, but before that he will spend his PGY-5 year working on AI applications to body imaging.
Mohamed Ghonim, MD
Research Fellow
Mohamed Ghonim is a 2022 medical graduate from Ain Shams University, Egypt. He did 22 months of Diagnostic & Interventional Radiology and Molecular Imaging training at his home institution and joined our lab in 2024. His research focuses on the application of machine learning in medical imaging, with particular emphasis on hybrid imaging modalities like PET/CT and PET/MRI. Mohamed is also interested in research enhancing the applications of ultrasound.
Mohanad Ghonim, MD
Research Fellow
Mohanad Ghonim is an MD from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He graduated med school in 2022 after which he started his DR, IR, and Molecular Imaging residency at Ain Shams University Hospitals. He then joined as a research fellow in Spring 2024 to embrace his interest in research on AI in radiology and clinical setting with a current focus on CMR and nuclear imaging in sarcoidosis patients, leveraging machine learning algorithms for enhanced diagnostic accuracy and disease quantification. He is committed to advancing radiology through innovation and evidence-based practice. Also, he is a candidate for Radiology Residency in Match2025.
Yining Wang
Visiting graduate student
Yining Wang is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Medical Imaging and Nuclear Medicine at Peking Union Medical College. She received her Bachelor's degree in Clinical Medicine from Capital Medical University, China. Her research focuses on cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging, integrating both clinical studies and animal models. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, working on cardiac imaging.
Graduate Students
Sophia Swago
PhD Student
Sophie is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Bioengineering and a fellow in the HHMI-NIBIB Interfaces Program. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2016. She joined the lab in 2020 after completing a year and a half of didactic medical training. Her research focus is on the development and application of downfield magnetic resonance spectroscopy techniques at high field.
Beth Thompson
MD/PhD Student
Beth Thompson is an MD/PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering. Her research interests are in using imaging and computational fluid dynamics to better understand cardiovascular pathophysiology.
Marina Awad
PhD Student
Marina is a Bioengineering PhD student, starting Fall 2023, at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in biomedical engineering from the University of Virginia in 2023. Her research interests are in cardiac MRI post-processing methods and using medical imaging to better understand physiological mechanisms and improve clinical care.
Cameron Beeche
PhD Student
Cameron is a PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Bioengineering. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021 and after spending two years as a research staff member in the Department of Radiology he joined our lab in 2023. His research interests are in deriving image phenotypes for prognostic and diagnostic modeling.
Jessie Dong
PhD Student
Jessie Dong is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics and Engineering Physics from Emory University and Master's degree in Bioengineering from University of Pennsylvania. Her research is focused on the development of computational techniques for medical image analysis. She is currently working on deep learning-based reconstruction methods for cardiac MRI.
Rakesh Sharma
PhD Student
Rakesh Sharma is a first-year PhD student in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree in biomedical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. Rakesh brings experience from medical device startups and has worked as a data scientist at Eli Lilly. His research focuses on using large multimodal datasets and machine learning algorithms to uncover clinically relevant insights.
Anindro Bhattacharya
Master's Student
Anindro is a Bioengineering Master’s student at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in 2024 from the University of Toronto, double majoring in Computer Science and Molecular Biology. Anindro’s research is focused around applying machine learning methods on cardiovascular imaging data to model hemodynamic flow in blood vessels.
Professional Trainees
Abhi Bhattaru
Research Assistant
Abhi is an incoming MD candidate at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. He graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from The College of New Jersey as part of the 7-year BA/MD program. He joined the lab in 2021 as a research assistant in the Department of Cardiovascular imaging. His research focus is on the applications of machine learning in medical imaging, specifically in sarcoidosis, amyloidosis, and congenital heart disease.
Allison Chae
Medical Student
Allison is an MD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from University of Southern California in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences. Her research interests are in leveraging neural networks to better predict patient outcomes through analyzing and clinically interpreting MRI scans.
Undergraduate Trainees
Rohan Valia
Rohan Valia is a current undergraduate student at Tufts University majoring in Computer Science with an expected graduation in 2026. His interests and research areas at the lab exist within machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science. He is a contributor to the AInSights platform in training machine learning models for medical imaging analysis within the Penn Medicine radiology clinical workflow. He is also a developer on the dashboard development process to diagnose model performance and monitor efficiency of the platform.
Richard Zhuang
Richard Zhuang ‘27 is a Biology and Computer Science double major at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in the application of machine learning to medicine to facilitate medical imaging analysis and improve disease diagnosis. Currently, he is working on analyzing data obtained from 3D deep learning segmentation of muscle to identify the risk factors associated with muscle loss.
Mukund Viswanadha
Mukund graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Biology and Statistics from the University of Missouri. His research interests include medical imaging and applying machine learning algorithms to improve diagnostic accuracy.
Joshua George
Joshua George '25 is a Physics major at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in the development and application of computational techniques that improve medical imaging analysis. He is currently working on generative deep learning reconstruction methods for MRI/CT that emphasize reduction and identification of hallucinatory structures.
Pavan Raghupathy
Pavan Raghupathy ’24 is a Bioengineering major at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests involve the application of machine learning algorithms on medical imaging and data analytic techniques to metabolic and oncologic diseases. He is currently working on projects determining the relationships between several image-derived phenotypes and different diseases, including Type II Diabetes and pancreatic cancer.
Isabel Song
Isabel is an electrical engineering major at the University of Pennsylvania (c’25). Her research interests include using medical imaging, machine learning, and biomedical informatics to contribute to a better understanding of pathological diseases.
Jin-seo Kim
Jin-seo Kim '24 is a Cognitive & Computer Science Major at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in applications of machine learning in the diagnosis and prediction of cardiovascular diseases and neurological disorders.
Benjamin Chan
Benjamin Chan '25 is a Systems Engineering Major at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a strong interest in machine learning, decision science, and data analytics. He has previously developed software toolkits in MATLAB for cancer image processing, working with the National Cancer Institute, for which he was recognized as a Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar and an International Science and Engineering Fair Finalist.
Hannah Liu
Hannah Liu ’25 is a Cognitive Science major (Computation concentration) at the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in researching the different ways that machine learning can be applied to a variety of fields of study. Currently, she is working on applying a machine learning algorithm that will effectively diagnose muscle tear injuries from MRI scans done on athletes, with hopes that this project will help make the recovery process for athletic injuries faster.
Joonghyun Kim
Joonghyun Kim '26 is a Bioengineering major at the University of Pennsylvania. He is interested in applying machine learning to radiology and aims to develop innovative solutions for interpreting medical image data.