Current Work

Where will I be?

Biography

Michelle graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics in 2006. She wrote her undergraduate junior and senior theses on the application of medical imaging programs to astronomical data under the supervision of Alyssa Goodman and Michael Halle. She continued this work as part of the Astronomical Medicine project at the IIC for the next two years. She worked with the developers of visualization tools including 3D Slicer to improve their effectiveness in multiple scientific domains (including astronomy). She also collaborated with the COMPLETE Team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) on star formation research. Her interests included studying outflows from young stars and working on segmentation algorithms. She also has observational experience on the CfA 1.2 m telescope, the Haystack Radio Telescope, the Green Bank Radio Telescope, and the MMT.

Michelle is now a graduate student at the Harvard School for Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) pursuing a Ph.D. in Applied Physics. She is currently working on the Multiscale Hemodynamics Project focusing on the 3D visualization and analysis of hemodynamic simulation data in conjunction with real medical imaging data, as well as the Astronomical Medicine Project focusing on interdisciplinary 3D visualization techniques and the development of new visualizations to advance both fields. Michelle was awarded in 2010 a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship and a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. She was selected as a TEDGlobal 2009 Fellow by TED, and was profiled as one of SEED Magazine's Revolutionary Minds ("The Re-envisionaries").

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My current primary focus is visualizing and analyzing data from the Multiscale Hemodynamics Project, a collaboration of cardiologists, physicists, and computer scientists to combine fluid dynamics simulations of blood flow with patient specific data to diagnose and treat heart disease. The project's "dream come true" outcome would be the development of a bedside supercomputer system that could be placed in a patient or operating room allowing a doctor to visualize a patient's coronary arteries in real-time 3D, overlaid with a bloodflow simulation. A physician could instantly identify areas of concern and take action such as inserting a stent to prevent a heart attack! To this end I am assisting in developing visualizations targeted at the medical users, conducting user studies to determine the best data display techniques, and developing new interactive visualizations to assist in data exploration and patient diagnosis.

I have also been working for the past few years on the Astronomical Medicine (AM) project where I have worked with the developers of medical visualization tools to improve their effectiveness in multiple scientific disciplines, and collaborate with both astronomers and doctors to help them analyze and visualize their multidimensional data. This has included devloping 3D Slicer to be used not only for medical imaging, but for astronomy imaging (the first step in making it a more general scientific application). This included adding astronomical coordinate support, expanded file support (including FITS), and better volume rendering capabilities.

On the astronomy side, I have been working with Hector Arce on our survey of the velocity features (i.e. shells and outflows) in Perseus. The survey was "conducted" by visualizing molecular line maps of Perseus in RA-DEC-Velocity space and then identifying extreme velocity excursions (traditionally something very tedious now made easy because of 3D visualization!). I have also been working with Erik Rosolowsky and the COMPLETE team on segmentation algorithms and hierarchical descriptions of molecular clouds. I have extended this work to include working on the application of segmentation algorithms developed for medical imaging, such as EMSegment, to astronomy data (and visa versa).

In addition, I have continued to work with Nick Holliman on the 3D (stereographic) imaging and display of astronomy data. This has included single images, and 3D animations (including a 3D movie discussing star formation in Perseus). On the HCI side, I have collaborated with Chia Shen and Hanspeter Pfister on the Scientists' Discovery Room project on the development of interactive digital environments for scientific collaboration on multidimensional data. On the medical imaging side, I have also collaborated with Dr. Taha Ahmed and his ophthalmology group at the Tennent Institute of Ophthalmology (Glasgow, UK) on the 3D visualization and analysis of the human cornea using confocal microscopy data.