Mert R Sabuncu, PhD

Dr. Sabuncu completed a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Princeton University in 2006. For his dissertation, Sabuncu studied image processing and its application to various medical imaging problems. After earning his Ph.D., Sabuncu moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he spent three years as a post-doctoral researcher. His work at MIT continued to deal with medical image analysis problems, and he started working with researchers in the Harvard Medical School (HMS). These collaborations prompted his move to HMS as a faculty member in 2009. Today, Sabuncu is an Assistant Professor at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where he leads a research group that focuses on developing computational algorithms for examining the relationships between medical image data, genotype data, and clinical outcome. One area Sabuncu is particularly interested in is the characterization of pre-clinical Alzheimer's disease—the phase of the disease where no symptoms have yet appeared and an intervention is likely to be successful. In addition to the BrightFocus award, Dr. Sabuncu is the recipient of a Harvard catalyst KL2 and an NIH K25 grant.