Faculty & Staff

David Piwnica-Worms, M.D., Ph.D.  - Professor and Chair, Cancer Systems Imaging; Professor, Cancer Biology

Research Interests: Molecular Imaging, Innate Immunity, Radio-Immunotherapy, Bioluminescence, PET Agents.

Email: DPiwnica-worms@mdanderson.org

Mark Pagel, Ph.D. - Professor and Deputy Chair, Cancer Systems Imaging; Professor, Imaging Physics

Research Interests: Imaging the tumor microenvironment; imaging tumor acidosis, enzyme activity, oxygenation and vascular permeability; CEST MRI, PET/MRI MR Fingerprinting, Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Imaging and MultiSpectral Optoacoustic Tomography.

Email: MDPagel@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. My research employs multi-nuclear and multimodal imaging and other techniques to characterize the TME in untreated and treated tumors and tumor or stromal cells.
E-mail: 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
E-mail: sbajaj@mdanderson.org

Pratip Bhattacharya, Ph.D. – Associate 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

Daniel Frigo, Ph.D. - Associate Professor, Cancer Systems Imaging & 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
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 alteredmetabolism, 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 its 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. – Instructor
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