Faculty and Staff

Wei Chen, MD, MS 
Email: wei.chen@umassmed.edu

Dr. Chen had her M.D. and M.S. in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in Tongji Medical University, China, as well as her M.S. in Computer Science in Southeastern University, Washington, D.C. She is interested in using multi-modality, multi-task noninvasive MRI/MR spectroscopy to investigate brain mechanisms contributing to improve rehabilitation strategies and psychopharmacology intervention in the psychiatry disorders and neurodegenerative disorders.

Meghan Heffernan, BA
Email: meghan.heffernan@umassmed.edu

Meghan Heffernan received her BA from Holy Cross and is a Research Assistant at the CCNI. She is working on studies primarily concerning addictive behavior and the role of neurotrophins in facilitating relapse. Currently, she is examining brain-derived neurotrophic factor in both chronic nicotine use and abstinence.

Wei Huang, PhD
Email: wei.huang2@umassmed.edu  

Dr. Wei Huang got her Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Her research focuses on providing computational tools for medical image segmentation, registration, 3D reconstruction, and fMRI analysis, as well as modules that allow translational research for pre-clinical and human studies.

Jean A King, PhD
Email: jean.king@umassmed.edu

Dr. King is the Director of the CCNI. Together with Dr. Craig Ferris, she pioneered the techniques of imaging conscious animals, and continues to push the applications of fMRI into new areas of innovation.

Zhifeng Liang, BS
Email: zhifeng.liang@umassmed.edu

Zhifeng Liang graduated from Fudan University, Shanghai with a BS degree in biology. He recently joined CCNI as a graduate student. His research interests include investigation of resting state in adolescent and adult rats, and other application of fMRI.

Pallavi Rane
Email: pallavi.rane@umassmed.edu  

Pallavi Rane is a Research Assistant and working towards her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from WPI. She has been working with the CCNI since 2005 on studies involving different applications of MRI. Currently she is working on developing a 6- Hydroxy Dopamine induced rat model of prodromal Parkinson’s Disease to look at non-motor deficits using functional MRI as a technique.

Nanyin Zhang, PhD
Email: nanyin.zhang@umassmed.edu  

Dr. Nanyin Zhang got his bachelor’s degree in biomedical engineering in 2000. Then he joined the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) at the University of Minnesota. In 2005 he got his PhD degree there. After that, he stayed as a research assistant professor to continue the research of his interest, mainly in the areas of fMRI and modeling the 17O NMR approach to measuring oxygen consumption rate in the brain. In 2009, he joined the Center for Comparative Neuroimaging (CCNI) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School as an assistant professor. His long-term research goal is to understand how neural circuitry and system work under normal and abnormal conditions by using fMRI.