Invited Speakers
Archana Venkataraman, Ph.D.
Archana Venkataraman is a John C. Malone Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. She directs the Neural Systems Analysis Laboratory and is a core faculty member of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. Dr. Venkataraman’s research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence, network modeling and clinical neuroscience. Her work has yielded novel insights in to debilitating neurological disorders, such as autism, schizophrenia and epilepsy, with the long-term goal of improving patient care. Dr. Venkataraman completed her B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at MIT in 2006, 2007 and 2012, respectively. She is a recipient of the MIT Provost Presidential Fellowship, the Siebel Scholarship, the National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the NIH Advanced Multimodal Neuroimaging Training Grant, the CHDI Grant on network models for Huntington's Disease, and the National Science Foundation CAREER award. Dr. Venkataraman was also named by MIT Technology Review as one of 35 Innovators Under 35 in 2019.
Stephen Aylward, Ph.D.
Stephen is founder and Senior Director of Operations of Kitware’s North Carolina office. This office has over 20 researchers and developers dedicated to creating and enhancing open-source algorithms, toolkits, and applications for academia and industry. Their work spans the fields of medical image analysis, computer vision, scientific computing, data management, and software engineering.
At the University of North Carolina (UNC), Stephen is an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Additionally, Stephen is the treasurer (previously the president) for the Insight Software Consortium which helps to manage ITK, IGSTK, and other open-source packages. He also serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, on various conference program committees including SPIE Medical Imaging and MICCAI, and on NIH study sections. Prior to joining Kitware, Stephen was a tenured Associate Professor of Radiology, Computer Science, and Surgery at UNC.
Helena Ledmyr, Ph.D.
Helena Ledmyr is on of the co-directors at the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility, INCF (incf.org). Helena has a PhD in the genetics of cardiovascular disease and has experience in gene therapy research. After leaving academia she worked with science communication and administration at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences before being recruited to INCF in 2010. Helena is committed to science outreach and is a member of the steering committee for the Swedish Network for Research Communication (forskom.org), and is one of the moderators for Real Scientists (realscientists.org), a science communication project on twitter with 90k followers. Helena’s responsibilities at INCF are development and communications, and her work is focused on member recruitment, stakeholder engagement, and governance.
Melanie-Anne Atkins, Ph.D.
Dr Melanie-Anne Atkins is a proven education innovator and a captivating public speaker with a heart for graduate student development. In 2016, she led the creation of a student-led wellness education hub that taught students, staff, and professors how to improve their mental health and wellness. Since then, Dr. Atkins has delivered over 200 presentations and collaborates with universities, colleges, and other institutions to develop educational resources and assessment tools in the areas of mental health and wellness, anti-oppressive practices in education, academic literacy and research skill development, intercultural communications, and eLearning. Drawing on her PhD research in anti-stigma education, Dr. Atkins has become a key contact for leaders seeking mutually beneficial, enriching, and sustainable strategies to support students with mental illness in the classroom and to promote mentally healthy learning environments for all.
Terry Peters, Ph.D., FCCPM
Prof Terry Peters is a Scientist in the Imaging Research Laboratories at the Robarts Research Institute, London, ON, Canada, and a Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Medical Imaging and Medical Biophysics, and the School of Biomedical Engineering, at Western University. Following several years as a Medical Physicist in Christchurch NZ, he moved to the Montreal Neurological Institute in Quebec, Canada, where he was involved with the development of image-guided neurosurgery systems using CT, MRI, and Digital Radiography. In 1997, he moved to Western University and the Robarts Research Institute in London Ontario Canada, where he founded the laboratory for Virtual Augmentation and Simulation in Surgery and Therapy (the VASST Lab). He has authored over 400 peer-reviewed papers in this area, in addition to two books and numerous book chapters, and has mentored over 90 trainees.
He is also actively involved in the academic affairs related to Medical Imaging, having served as Associate Editor for the journals IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, and Computerized Medical Imaging and Graphics. He was also highly active in the formation of the MICCAI Society where he served as a founding board member and treasurer and has been Chair, Co-Chair, or Program Chair for three of MICCAI’s international meetings in the past 20 years. He was also instrumental in establishing the Secretariat office for the MICCAI Society at the Robarts Research Institute in London Canada.
Cristian A. Linte, Ph.D.
Cristian A. Linte is an Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering and Chester F. Carlson Centre for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology. He holds a BASc in Mechanical Engineering and a MESc and PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Western University. Starting with his graduate career, Cristian’s research has focused on biomedical image computing, modeling, and visualization in support of computer-aided diagnosis and computer-assisted interventions, including image-guided navigation, therapy planning, and guidance, with a significant emphasis on cardiac applications. After completing his PhD, he joined the Biomedical Imaging Resource at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN, where he became involved with various image-based modeling applications for heart and spine therapy planning and guidance.
During the past 15 years, Cristian’s research has been disseminated in more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings. He has mentored more than 20 graduate and undergraduate students and has secured more than $4M in research support from Canadian and US federal agencies and foundations. He has served as lead editor for 6 volumes in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series, guest editor for 6 journal special issues in the IET Healthcare Technology Letters, Springer’s Journal of Computer-Assisted Surgery and Therapy, and Taylor & Francis’s Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging and Visualization, and serves as an associated editor for several journal and conferences in the field. He is currently the Chair of the SPIE Medical Imaging - Image-guided Procedures, Robotic Interventions and Modeling conference, co-chair of the Computer-aided Surgery track at the annual international CARS congress, Chair of the MICCAI 2021 Satellite Events, and also the 12 years and ongoing lead organizer and chair of the MICCAI Workshop series on Augmented Environments for Computer-assisted Interventions (AE-CAI). Cristian attributes a great deal of his accomplishments to the mentorship he received during his doctoral and post-doctoral training, for which he is very grateful.