UCSF Radiology Welcomes New Faculty Members
The UC San Francisco Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging would like to extend a warm welcome to our talented incoming faculty members. We are proud of their accomplishments and look forward to their future contributions as faculty members to our clinical, educational and research endeavors.
Matthew J. Barkovich, MD
In September 2019, Matt Barkovich, MD will join UCSF Radiology as an assistant professor in residence in the Neuroradiology section.
In 2013, Dr. Matthew Barkovich received his medical degree from UC San Diego School of Medicine. In 2014, he completed a one-year internship at Highland Hospital in Oakland, CA. His four years of training as a Diagnostic Radiology Resident were completed at UCSF in 2018. During his final year of residency, Dr. Barkovich was a Research Fellow in the 2017-2018 NIH T32 Biomedical Imaging Training Program at UCSF where he focused his research on neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and how imaging abnormalities in NF1 patients correlate with clinical phenotype. In 2019, Dr. Barkovich completed a fellowship in Neuroradiology at UCSF.
Dr. Barkovich was named the 2014 Intern of the Year at Highland Hospital, received the Resident Research grant from the Margulis Society in 2016, and was a recipient of the American Society of Pediatric Neuroradiology Derek Harwood Nash Award in 2018 for his work developing a pediatric hindbrain atlas. His research is focused on using advanced imaging to better understand the molecular pathways that drive neurodevelopmental disorders and normal brain development.
Shital Gandhi, MD
Shital Gandhi, MD joined UCSF Radiology in July 2019 an assistant professor of clinical radiology focused on Ultrasound in the Abdominal Imaging section. She received her medical degree from Grant Medical College in Mumbai, India in 2001. In 2007 she completed her four-year Diagnostic Radiology residency from the Long Island College Hospital, Brooklyn, NY. After working as a neuroradiologist in New York, she moved to San Francisco and completed an Ultrasound and Abdominal Imaging fellowship at UCSF in 2015.
Dr. Gandhi currently practices diagnostic ultrasound and obstetrical care including ultrasound-guided intraoperative localization. She also practices with the UCSF Fetal Treatment Center assisting in image-guided procedures.
Michael B. Heller, MD
In July 2019, Michael Heller, MD joined UCSF Radiology as an assistant professor in the Interventional Radiology section.
Dr. Heller obtained his medical degree from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL in 2013, followed by an internship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA in 2014. Dr. Heller served as chief resident from 2017-2018, completing his four-year Diagnostic Radiology residency at UCSF in 2018. In 2019, Heller completed a fellowship in Interventional Radiology at Northwestern University in Chicago, IL.
Joseph R. Leach, MD, PhD
Joseph Leach, MD, PhD obtained his PhD from the joint UCSF-UC Berkeley Bioengineering program in 2009. In 2013 Dr. Leach earned his medical degree at UCSF, followed by a one-year internship at California Pacific Medical Center of San Francisco. Dr. Leach completed a four-year Diagnostic Radiology residency at UCSF in 2018. During 2017-2018 Dr. Leach was a NIH T32 Training Grant research fellow at UCSF Radiology, where he focused his research on the development of methodologies by which to study the biomechanics of abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) on a patient-specific basis, incorporating data from both routine clinical and more advanced imaging modalities. Dr. Leach completed a clinical fellowship in Abdominal Imaging/Ultrasound at UCSF in 2019.
Dr. Leach joined the department as an assistant professor in residence in the section of Abdominal Imaging in July 2019.
Yan Li, PhD
Yan Li, PhD joined UCSF Radiology as an assistant professor in March 2019. Dr. Li received her medical degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, Master of Science in Biochemistry from McGill University in Canada, and PhD from the UCSF/UC Berkeley Joint Graduate Program in Bioengineering. Before accepting her current position, she worked in the laboratory of Sarah Nelson, PhD as a post-doctoral fellow and later as an assistant research scientist.
Dr. Yan Li’s research focuses on developing methods for obtaining reliable metabolic information from the brain in order to characterize spatial and temporal heterogeneity and the biologic behavior during disease time for brain tumors, psychiatric and neurologic diseases. This includes the development of new methods for obtaining whole brain metabolites and tools for generating metrics of brain neurotransmitters using 3T and 7T MR scanners, implementation of statistical methods to relate metabolic metrics to clinical outcome or measures, and integrating steady state 1H metabolic imaging with PET, hyperpolarized 13C and advanced MR imaging parameters in order to elucidate the underlying normal and abnormal biological process.
Alexander H. Lam, MD
Alexander Lam, MD earned his medical degree at UC Davis School of Medicine in 2013, followed by a one-year internship in the Department of Internal Medicine at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. His four-year Diagnostic Radiology Residency was completed in 2018 at UC Irvine School of Medicine in Orange, CA, where he served as chief resident from 2017-2018. Dr. Lam completed a one-year fellowship in Vascular and Interventional Radiology at the Department of Radiology, University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, VA in 2019.
Dr. Lam is the recipient of several awards, including the Roentgen Resident/Fellow Research Award, Society of Interventional Radiology Foundation Radiology Resident Research Grant, and the American College of Radiology – Association of University Radiologists Research Scholar Award.
Dr. Lam joined the Interventional Radiology section at UCSF Radiology in 2019 as an assistant clinical professor.
Dimitrios Mitsouras, PhD
Dimitrios Mitsouras, PhD received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Brown University in 1998, and his Master of Science (2000) and PhD (2004) in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Dr. Mitsouras’ academic appointments were as an instructor at Harvard Medical School (2004-2008); assistant professor in the Department of Radiology at Harvard Medical School (2008-2017) and associate professor, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Ottawa, Canada (2017-2019).
Dr. Mitsouras has held a number of major research administrative leadership positions, most recently as Director of Medical Physics & MRI Research (2013-2015) at the Applied Imaging Science Lab in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, and Director of the Applied Imaging Science Lab at the same institution (2015-2017). He also serves as Associate Editor of the journal 3D Printing In Medicine.
He is a recipient of a 2013 Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health, and a 2016 Magna Cum Laude Award from RSNA.
Dr. Mitsouras has had a strong focus on education and teaching throughout his career. His interdisciplinary background has allowed him to teach difficult scientific techniques to clinicians and concurrently to develop basic scientists into effective clinical scientists. has published more than 80 peer-reviewed articles, 2 patents, and 7 book chapters that have been collectively cited more than 2800 times. He has also developed and taught 7 CME courses on clinical 3D Printing (2014-2018), Computational Fluid Dynamics (2016-2017), and Artificial Intelligence (2018) that have been attended by over 1000 clinicians and clinical and science trainees at the Radiological Society of North America.
Dr. Mitsouras joined UCSF Radiology as an associate professor in residence in Cardiovascular Imaging Research in July 2019.
Preeti Sukerkar, MD, PhD
In August, 2019, Preeti Sukerkar, MD, PhD joined UCSF Radiology as an assistant clinical professor in the Musculoskeletal Imaging section.
Dr. Sukerkar received her PhD in Chemistry in 2011 and her medical degree in 2013 from the Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, IL. In 2014, Dr. Sukerkar completed a one-year internship in internal medicine at the Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, Chicago. Her four-year diagnostic radiology residency was accomplished in 2018 at Stanford Healthcare, Palo Alto, CA, where she served as chief resident. She then completed a fellowship in both Musculoskeletal Imaging and in Body MRI at Stanford in 2019.
In 2013, Dr. Sukerkar was the recipient of the first prize in the MIT Enterprise Forum of Chicago. In 2016, Dr. Sukerkar was a recipient of Stanford’s Etta Kalin Moskowitz Fund research Award and a Top 10 Poster Award at the QI/Patient Safety Symposium.
Joseph (An Thanh) Vu, PhD
Joseph (An Thanh) Vu, PhD obtained his PhD from the joint UC Berkeley – UCSF Bioengineering graduate program in 2011. He served as a research associate in Radiology at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research from 2012-2015, where he developed advanced fMRI and dMRI methods for the 7T Human Connectome Project. Subsequently as a senior research scientist at Advanced MRI Technologies, Dr. Vu continued to advance the field of high spatiotemporal resolution fMRI through multiple BRAIN Initiative projects.
In 2016, Dr. Vu took on the roles of physicist in Radiology at the San Francisco Veterans Affairs Health Care System (SFVAHCS) and Technical Director for the Center for Imaging of Neurodegenerative Diseases (CIND) at the SFVAHCS, where he developed internationally patent pending fMRI technology, spear headed shared equipment grants to fund major upgrades and expansions of the 7T MRI system at the SFVAHCS, and serves on both the UCSF and VA MRI Safety Committees.
In March of 2019, Dr. Vu accepted the position of assistant adjunct professor at UCSF Radiology and at the SFVAHCS, where he serves as Director of Advanced Imaging Technologies for the Veteran Affairs Advanced Imaging Research Center (VAARC).