Faculty & Staff

David Piwnica-Worms, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Cancer Systems Imaging
Professor, Cancer Biology
Research Interests: beta radioligand therapy, innate immunity, bioluminescence, PET agents
Email: DPiwnica-Worms@MDAnderson.org

Ellen Ackerstaff, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor 
Research Interests: Exploring the tumor microenvironment (TME), including and not limited to vascularity, cancer metabolism, hypoxia, pH, and tumor-stroma interactions, in vitro, in vivo, and ex vivo to establish the TME’s impact on tumor progression and treatment response; employing multi-nuclear and multimodal imaging and other techniques to characterize the TME in untreated and treated tumors and tumor or stromal cells
Email: EAckerstaff@mdanderson.org

Sahil Bajaj, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Functional and structural MRI, diffusion tensor imaging, functional near-infrared spectroscopy, brain morphometry, brain connectivity (functional, structural, directed functional/Granger causality and effective/dynamic causal modeling), machine learning, mental distress and sleep disorders
Email: sbajaj@mdanderson.org

Pratip Bhattacharya, Ph.D.
Professor, Cancer Systems Imaging & Imaging Physics
Research Interests: Hyperpolarized MRI, dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP), real-time molecular and metabolic imaging in different cancer systems, targeted molecular imaging by positron emission tomography (PET) and hyperpolarized silicon MRI, metabolomics
Email: PKBhattacharya@mdanderson.org

Ryan Coll, Ph.D.
Instructor
Research Interests: Theranostic radiopharmaceutical design through incorporation of innovative radionuclides, cellular target identification, and nuclear imaging for validation prior to translation
Email: rpcoll@mdanderson.org

Daniel Frigo, Ph.D.
Professor, Deputy Chair, Scientific Director of Research, Cancer Systems Imaging
Professor, Genitourinary Medical Oncology 
Research Interests: Understanding how various signaling pathways, such as those regulated by the androgen receptor, CaMKK2, AMPK, mTOR and Myc, drive the progression of prostate cancer; goal: To exploit these newly uncovered pathways for therapeutic purposes. Interestingly, many of these signaling pathways converge at various metabolic nodes; the end result is a shift in oncogenic metabolism that allows the cancer cells to utilize a diverse array of nutrients to the benefit of the cancer cell
Email: Frigo@mdanderson.org

Seth Gammon, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Development of imaging-inspired therapeutics including radiolabeled antibodies, development of new PET or hyperpolarized MRI agents for study of the adaptive and innate immune systems; leveraging existing PET, MRI, bioluminescent and fluorescent reporters for studying the complex interaction of the innate immune system, tumor biology and cancer chemotherapeutics
Email: STGammon@mdanderson.org

Brian Grindel, Ph.D.
Instructor
Research Interests: Directed evolution of peptide imaging agents and therapeutics using mRNA display; developing and characterizing peptide and molecular agents targeting autophagy, immune checkpoint modulation and metabolism in cancer
Email: BJGrindel@mdanderson.org
 

Loukia Karacosta, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Leveraging cancer systems biology approaches and single-cell technologies like mass cytometry (CyTOF) and multiplexed imaging to interrogate phenotypic plasticity and the spatiotemporal dynamics that drive therapy resistance in the tumor microenvironment
Email: LGKaracosta@mdanderson.org

Chun Li, Ph.D.
Professor
Research Interests: Development of molecular imaging probes; development of novel drug-delivery systems and combination strategy; image-guided therapy
Email: CLi@mdanderson.org

H. Charles Manning, Ph.D.
Professor, Cancer Systems Imaging
Director, Cyclotron Radiochemistry Facility
Scientific Director, Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging
Research Interests: Development, validation, implementation and clinical translation of imaging and chemical probes to non-invasively quantify molecular events in vivo
Email: HCManning@mdanderson.org

Steven Millward, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, Associatiate Director of Chemistry, Cancer Systems Imaging
Research Interests: Imaging of apoptosis and autophagy, ovarian cancer metabolism, therapeutic targeting of autophagy, directed evolution of imaging agents
Email: SMillward@mdanderson.org

Shivanand Pudakalakatti, Ph.D.
Instructor
Research Interests: Understanding the role of metabolism in growth, survival, relapse, and treatment in various cancer systems employing magnetic resonance and other biophysical techniques; taking the advantages of altered metabolism, next generation diagnostic and therapeutic intervention biomarkers will be identified, and drugs will be developed for treatment
Email: SPudakalakatti@mdanderson.org

C. Chad Quarles, Ph.D.
Professor
Research Interests: Preclinical discovery, refinement and clinical translation of multi-modality neuroimaging technologies with application to brain cancer, cancer neuroscience and neurohealth; projects and applications include MRI physics and engineering, MR-based biomarker discovery, simultaneous PET/MRI, radiopathomics, emerging radiotracers, functional neuroimaging, multi-modality and integrative AI-based analytics, neurosurgical guidance, biology-based radiotherapy, therapy response assessment, image-based pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics 
Email: CCQuarles@mdanderson.org

Elavarasan Subramani, Ph.D.
Instructor
Research Interests: Decoding the metabolic dependencies and their interaction with epigenetic changes in prostate cancer; understanding the molecular drivers of cancer plasticity for the development of novel therapeutic strategies; metabolic markers identification for non-invasive cancer detection and assessment of therapy response
Email: ESubramani@mdanderson.org

Margie Sutton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Director of Education, Cancer Systems Imaging
Research Interests: Molecular imaging; genetically encoded reporters of protein-protein interactions, signal transduction, and dynamic cellular response; development of therapeutic or diagnostic interventions for gynecological cancers
Email: MNSutton@mdanderson.org