Principal investigator
Tommaso Di Ianni, PhD
Tommaso is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Radiology & Biomedical Imaging at the University of California, San Francisco. Excited about ultrasound and the brain, he is committed to making an impact on the treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders by advancing ultrasound applications, both for therapeutic and imaging purposes. Tommaso completed his postdoctoral training in the Department of Radiology at Stanford University, where he received the Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2019 for his work on ultrasound technologies for functional neuroimaging and image-guided neuromodulation. He received a PhD in biomedical engineering from the Technical University of Denmark, and an MSc (summa cum laude) and a BSc degree in electronic engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy. Outside the lab, he enjoys spending time with his family and playing music.
Postdocs
Valeria Grasso, PhD
Valeria is a postdoctoral researcher enthusiastic about the potential of ultrasounds to accurately monitor and effectively modulate neural activity in brain disorders. As a Marie Curie fellow, she received her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering (summa cum laude) in April 2023, based at FUJIFILM VisualSonics in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and affiliated with the Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel, Germany. Within this industry-academy alliance, she focused on the advancement of photoacoustic imaging and its translation into the clinics for orthopedic applications. Earlier, Valeria graduated with a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Pisa, Italy. Besides work, she enjoys spending her free time exploring nature, traveling, and trying out new food with friends and family.
Jack Berry, MD, PhD
Jack is a research track Psychiatry Resident at UCSF, and he is excited by the potential of focused ultrasound neuromodulation for treating psychiatric illness. Originally from the DC area, he went to Williams College for undergrad. After college, he moved across the country to work in the Steinberg neurosurgery lab at Stanford before returning to the east coast for MD-PhD training at Columbia. Jack did his PhD in Rene Hen’s lab, where he studied neural circuits in the ventral hippocampus involved in anxiety- and fear-related behavior. When he’s not seeing patients or working in the lab, he enjoys swimming, scuba, tennis, single-malt scotch, and the occasional video game.
Undergraduate Research Assistants
Anika Rao
Anika is a sophomore studying Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in medical imaging technologies and their impact on the field of medicine as a whole. In her free time, she loves to go for runs, read, and try new restaurants with friends.
Amani Shah
Amani is a sophomore in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is interested in the development of novel, innovative technologies, such as focused ultrasound! In her free time, Amani enjoys dancing, live music, game nights, and quality time with her friends and family.
Joseph Tennyson
Joseph is an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) major at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests are in biomedical imaging and the general application of technology in medicine.
Laura Cho
Laura is a junior majoring in Psychology and Neurobiology at UC Berkeley. Her research interests include functional ultrasound imaging, machine learning, and their applications to neuropsychiatry.
Laura received a SWAN Research Award from the UC Berkeley Department of Psychology for her work in functional ultrasound imaging.