David J Foran, Ph.D.

Dr. Foran is a Professor of Pathology & Radiology and Director of the Center for Biomedical Imaging at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and The Cancer Institute of New Jersey. His research focuses on the design, development, and implementation of new approaches in computer-assisted diagnostics, medical imaging and statistical pattern recognition for resolving challenging clinical problems in pathology, radiology, and oncology.

A major concentration for his laboratory has been the development of a family of web-based data-mining technologies and computational methods for characterizing lymphoproliferative disorders and for elucidating the role that protein and molecular expression plays in determining the morphologic profiles exhibited by a wide range of malignancies. This research has led to the development of 1) an image-guided screening system for discriminating among commonly confused malignant lymphomas and leukemia; 2) a robotic system for performing automated imaging, evaluation, and archiving of tissue microarrays; 3) an automated means for 3-D detection, characterization, and tracking of hepatic neoplasms from spiral CT; and 4) a new approach for characterizing neuroanatomy from MR images using mathematical morphometry and cluster analysis. This work has resulted in numerous publications, invited book chapters and several pending and issued patents. Dr. Foran's research has been funded by the Whitaker Foundation, the NJ Commission on Science & Technology, the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Radiological Society of North America, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the private sector.

He has served as a speaker and session chair for the IEEE international conferences for the engineering in medicine and biology society (EMBS), as the director and session chair for the scientific program for the annual conferences of the national Association for Pathology Informatics (API), as an invited speaker for the American Society for Investigative Pathology (ASIP) and as an organizer and session chair for the World Conference on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Foran was recently selected to serve as a charter member on the Biomedical Computing and Health Informatics (BCHI) study section for the newly established National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He also serves as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, as an Associate Editor for the journal on Cancer Informatics and as a reviewer for the national Pathology Informatics Association, the American Medical Informatics Association, BMC Cancer, Archives in Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging.

Wenjin Chen, Ph.D.

Wenjin Chen, Ph.D. received her Bachelor of Medicine degree from Beijing Medical University in 1997. She entered the group as a Graduate student in the Joint Program of Molecular Biosciences between the Rutgers University and The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

After earning her Ph.D. degree through her work in tissue microarray analysis, image processing, pattern recognition and robotic telemicroscopy, Dr. Chen took the position serving as Associate Director of New Technologies in the Center of Biomedical Imaging & Infomatics. She leads several research projects in the areas including Tissue Microarray analysis and management, digital microscopy, and image-based pathology information systems.

chenwe {at} umdnj.edu

Vicky Chu , M.S.

Ms. Vicky Chu learned her Bachelors degree in Electric and Electronic Engineeing at theNanjing Institute of Technology, China in 1989.

After receiving her Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Clemson University, South Carolina in December, 1996, Ms. Chu worked at Intergrated Support System, Inc. in Seneca, South Carolina and Vertel Corporation in Los Angeles, California, respectively, as a Software Engineer.

In 2000, Ms Chu moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and spent over five years at the Center for Pathology and Oncology at University of Pittsburgh as a Database Developer and Database Administrator.

Ms Chu joined Center for Biomedical Imaging & Informatics as a System Programmer in September, 2006. She is currently working as a major developer on several joint research projects with Dr. Wenjin Chen in the area of Biomedical Informatics, Pathology Informatics as well as image based Tissue Microarray Information System.

Jun Hu , M.S.

Mr. Jun Hu received his B.S. degree in Biochemistry from Wuhan University in 1997. After earning M.S. degrees from both Rutgers University in Molecular Biology and NJIT in Computer Sciences, Mr. Hu worked from 2002 to 2007 in the bioinformatics center and the proteomics center at the New Jersey Medical School of UMDNJ as a bioinformatics specialist. He has extensive experience in DNA/RNA sequence alignment, motif finding, and mass spectrometry data analysis.

Mr. Hu joined Center for Biomedical Imaging & Informatics as a senior bioinformatics specialist in March, 2008. His latest research focuses are in areas of biomedical imaging analysis, statistical pattern recognition, and image-based tissue microarray information systems.

Ryan Golhar, Ph.D.

Ryan Golhar received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Rutgers University, graduating on Dean's List.  He accepted a position for a software development company for several years as a senior architect/developer. He received several industry awards including two Reader's Choice Awards from Visual Basic Programmer's Journal and one Reader's Choice award from Intelligent Enterprise for GUI component development.  He later moved on to Compaq Computer Corporation as a technical consultant in New York City, where he worked closely with search engine technology. He left that post to pursue his Master's degree in Computer Science.

While pursuing his M.S., he discovered the field of Bioinformatics and finished his Master's (graduating cum laude) in Biomedical Informatics at The School of Health Related Professions (SHRP) at UMDNJ; His Master's work was focused on automated sequence analysis, genome assembly and annotation by computational methods.

In January 2002, he accepted a position with the Informatics Institute at UMDNJ. His responsibilities included teaching courses in the GSBS-based bioinformatics curriculum, training and consultation in faculty, staff and student research projects, and infrastructure management/integration between the Institute and Academic Computing Services. He designed and implemented the high-performance linux based computing environment within the Institute used throughout the university for research computing.

Ryan Golhar received his Ph.D. in Biomedical Informatics from UMDNJ in 2006, under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Byrne and Dr. Ming Ouyang. His dissertation topic was on Intron Evolution in Chicken, Human, and Mouse.  He continues to use his research in automated sequence analysis and annotation in addition to his research on intron evolution to explore new areas of cancer and pathogen detection using new single molecule techniques.

In April 2008, Dr. Golhar accepted a position under Guna Rajagopal at The Cancer Institute of New Jersey as a System Architect to deploy caBIG within CINJ.  Dr. Golhar is also working with the Center for Biomedical Imaging and Informatics to deploy their IBM supercomputer for the "Help Defeat Cancer" project.

Dr. Golhar's research interests include single-molecule based detection, molecular evolution, scientific programming, high-performance computing, biological databases, and sequence analysis among others.

Xin Qi, Ph.D.

Xin Qi received her B.S. degree in Precision Instrument and Opto-electronics Engineering from Tianjin University in 1996. After three years' work, she returned to Tianjin University for graduate study in the same discipline. In 2001, she began attending Case Western Reserve University as a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering for her Ph. D. study. She has been working in Endoscopy Research Lab on computer aided diagnosis of early cancers in the gastrointestinal tract using optical coherence tomography. Dr. Qi will join Center for Biomedical Imaging & Informatics as a Research Associate in June 2008.

Dr. Qi's research interests include computer-aided diagnosis, image pattern recognition, early cancer detection, optical imaging technology and optical coherence tomography.