Salehi Receives Award for Work on Brain Connectivity Patterns

Mehraveh Salehi received the Young Scientist Award from the 20th International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention 2017 (MICCAI) on September 13th for her paper, “A Submodular Approach to Create Individualized Parcellations of the Human Brain.”

Salehi is an electrical engineering Ph.D. student supervised by Professors Todd Constable (radiology & biomedical imaging) and Amin Karbasi (electrical engineering and computer science) and a member of the Yale Institute for Network Science (YINS). The paper was co-written by Karbasi, Constable, and Dustin Scheinost from Yale’s Magnetic Resonance Research Center.

Salehi is interested in applications of machine learning algorithms and submodularity in the human brain. More specifically, her research is aimed at developing models that relate human behavior to individual brain functional connectivity patterns as measured by fMRI.

When asked about her unusual combination of dual advisors, Salehi said, “That’s the incredible thing about being at YINS! I can apply my research interests across disciplines, and be supported by faculty in multiple schools and departments. I think this is the future model for many Ph.D. candidates, and is well-suited for the big data revolution, applying mathematics, engineering, computer science, and machine learning to medicine. I feel lucky to experience the new interdisciplinary Yale University.”

After completing her Ph.D., Salehi hopes to work for Google Brain and eventually start her own company, combining her interests in machine learning and cognitive neuroscience.