Tim Duong Research Laboratory

Welcome

Our research focuses on

- Biomedical imaging and analysis methods to detect and diagnose diseases early and accurately,
- Applications of these methods to characterize disease pathophysiology and progression to inform patient care
- Modeling using imaging and EMR/EHR data to predict disease courses, treatment responses, and identifiy risk factors
- Long COVID-19 (PASC),

We collaborate closely with clinicians to solve clinically impactful problems.

Tim Duong, PhD
Professor & Vice Chair for Research, Radiology
Assoc Director, Integrative Imaging & Data Science
tim.duong@einsteinmed.edu

! Congratulations to our trainees who will be moving up to the next stages of their careers (see News tab). We are so proud of your accomplishments.

! Open positions, available jobs, and active recruitments. We are seeking highly motivated postdocs, research coordinators, research scientists, and faculty at all levels. See Job Opportunities Tab.

We offer amazing and productive research opportunities to highly motivated medical, undergraduate, and high school students and residents. Our priority is to get trainees to publish first or co-first author papers (we have an excellent track record here) and we ask for your commitment to work toward publications. Most research projects can be done remotely. Please send CV and transcripts and state your time commitments and areas of research itnterests relevant to what we do. Please do not reach out if you are not serious about commitment.

COVID project collaboration: We have build a large database of COVID-19 patients (with longitudinal EMR variables in de-identified ATLAS/OMOP (system-wide) and TrinetX (national/international) data and different propensity matched controls from 2016 to date). If you have ideas and would like to collaborate, please reach out. We are interested in long covid (PASC) and are publishing a steady number of papers. Long covid could cause damages of many organs and result in new clinical disorders or worsen existing disorders. We welcome collaboration with domain experts (in radiology, medicine, neurology, data science, AI, infectious diseease, pediatrics, nephrology, cardiology, etc...) that long covid could potentially affect. These databases could also be used to address other questions that are not COVID-19 related.

Former colleagues and trainees: We would love to hear your good news and life accomplishment once in awhile. Please write.

PhD training in biomedical imaging - a poster of what our faculty work on.

Technical expertise: MRI and other imaging methods, neuroimaging methods, big data, informatics, bioinformatics, machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, large language models (LLM), image analysis, data analysis, biostatistics, predictive modeling, meta-analysis, data sciences, and imaging clinical trials. Some software used in the lab:
SQL/Sequel, Python, Matlab, scripts
R, SPSS
SPM, FSL, AFNI, Freesurfer, CAT12, 3D slicer
Mpower/Montage, VNA PACS, ITKsnap, Radiant
AI algorithms, deep learning algorithms, convolutional neural networks (CNN, RNN), Jupyter Notebook, LLM
ATLAS, OMOP, TriNetX
Other machine learning methods (neural networks, k-NN, SVM, LSTM, XGBoost)
Other modeling methods (PCA, GLM)
6 VMs parallel-core CPU with 64Gb RAM each, dedicated SQL server, 6 GPU
Individual VMs for power users
Computing resources for LLM. Foundation models, retrieval-augmented generation, fine-tuning, enterprise data.

Clinical domain expertise: Neuroscience, medicine, neurology, physiology, animal models, retinal diseases (glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy), neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, and COVID-19.

Our research is translational and transdisciplinary. We collaborate closely with radiologists, neurologists, ophthalmologists, neuroscientists, engineers, computer scientists, and physicists to solve clinically relevant problems. Trainees learn from a large group of experts based on their projects. Group members include imaging scientists, data analysts, engineers, and a few medical doctors.

Mentoring: We place strong emphasis on mentoring and career development. I have mentored over two dozen predocs, three dozen postdocs and two dozen non-tenure track faculty and tenure-track faculty. Grantsmanship is important part of the training and about half of our graduate-level trainees are funded by individual and/or institutional training grants. Many of our trainees have become leaders in their fields. Most of our trainees end up as tenured faculty, tenure-track faculty, research scientists in academic institutions, research scientists in drug companies, and medical physicists in hospitals.

About Montefiore-Einstein Radiology: Montefiore-Einstein Radiology has over 70 FTE radiologists, 15 PhD or MD/PhD faculty, and a large network of state-of-art, advanced imaging facilities that provide medical care across multiple acute care hospitals, a dedicated children’s hospital, as well as multiple satellite clinics across the Montefiore Health System. Our physicians and faculty actively engage in research in all organ systems. In addition, we provide research facilities and expertise to support a wide range of collaborative research projects. Our patient cohort is diverse with a large population of underserved minorities. We also provide research opportunities to fellows, residents, medical, undergraduate, and high school students.

Montefiore-Einstein Radiology has an annual NIH grant funding of $5.1M (FY2023) as principal investigators. The Gruss Magnetic Resonance Research Center (MMRC, Radiology) has 6 imaging research faculty and an array of research-dedicated human and animal imaging scanners that include a state-of-the-art Philips 3 Tesla MRI human scanner, a Bruker 7 Tesla MRI animal scanner, and a Siemens INVEON PET/SPECT/CT animal scanner. The MRRC currently supports 32 research projects funded by $31.5 millions of NIH grants (FY2023). Biomedical imaging projects span across many disciplines that include neurology/neuroscience, aging/dementia, cancer, cardiology, ophthalmology, MSK, radiation oncology, and diabetes.

ABOUT MONTEFIORE-EINSTEIN

Founded in 1955, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Einstein) is one of the nation’s premier institutions for medical education, basic research and clinical investigation. Montefiore Medicine Academic Health System, one of the largest in the country, is an integrated academic delivery system comprising seven campuses, including 15 hospitals, a multi-county ambulatory network. Einstein is home to multiple Centers of Excellence including 7 NIH-designated research centers. Montefiore-Einstein has an annual NIH grant funding of $245 (2020). A full-time faculty of some 2,000 conducts research, teaches, and delivers health care in every major biomedical specialty. The college has some 730 medical students, 193 Ph.D. students, 106 MD/Ph.D. students and 275 postdoctoral fellows. Montefiore-Einstein faculty also train over 1,300 residents, 420 allied health students, and 1,600 nursing students annually.