Current Work

Biography

Michelle graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics in 2006. She wrote her undergraduate junior and senior theses on the application of medical imaging programs to astronomical data under the supervision of Alyssa Goodman and Michael Halle. She is now continuing this work as part of the Astronomical Medicine project at the IIC. She also works with the developers of visualization tools including 3D Slicer to improve their effectiveness in multiple scientific domains (including astronomy).

In addition to her research interests in scientific visualization and image analysis, she collaborates with the COMPLETE Team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) on star formation research. Her current interests include studying outflows from young stars and working on segmentation algorithms. She also has observational experience on the CfA 1.2 m telescope, the Haystack Radio Telescope, the Green Bank Radio Telescope, and the MMT.

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I am currently working on the Astronomical Medicine (AM) project to develop 3D Slicer to be used not only for medical imaging, but for astronomy imaging (the first step in making it a more general scientific application). This includes adding astronomical coordinate support, expanded file support (including FITS), and better volume rendering capabilities.

On the astronomy side, I am currently writing-up the results of my thesis and subsequent work with Hector Arce on our survey of the velocity features (i.e. shells and outflows) in Perseus. The survey was "conducted" by visualizing molecular line maps of Perseus in RA-DEC-Velocity space and then identifying extreme velocity excursions (traditionally something very tedious now made easy because of 3D visualization!). I am also working with Erik Rosolowsky and the COMPLETE team on segmentation algorithms and hierarchical descriptions of molecular clouds. I have extended this work to include working on the application of segmentation algorithms developed for medical imaging, such as EMSegment, to astronomy data (and visa versa).

In addition, I am continuing to work with Nick Holliman on the 3D (stereographic) imaging and display of astronomy data. This has included single images, and 3D animations. We are currently working on a joint IIC-DVL 3D movie discussing star formation in Perseus. On the HCI side, I am collaborating with Hanspeter Pfister and the Scientists' Discovery Room team on the development of interactive digital environments for scientific collaboration on multidimensional data. My newest collaboration is with Dr. Taha Ahmed and his ophthalmology group at the Tennent Institute of Ophthalmology (Glasgow, UK) on the 3D visualization and analysis the human cornea using confocal microscopy data.