The engineering tools that are routinely used in the laboratory include mathematical modeling, developing and implementing signal and image processing algorithms, and machine learning. 

Current Projects

Advanced image processing and object classification for study of T Gondii parasite.

Our group develops image processing and object classification algorithms to process and extract information from microscopic images to aid in the understanding of Toxoplasma gondii biology in a collaborative project with Dr. Anthony Sinai (https://microbiology.med.uky.edu/users/sinai). The tools that are developed are used to process images of tissue cyst from brains of infected mice stained for various cellular structures by Dr. Sinai’s group. Features of detected subcellular objects are used in machine learning  approaches to classify the subcellular objects into different categories which will aid in furthering the understanding of the parasite’s chronic phase growth and how the parasite evades treatments. Current development is focused on classification of sub-cellular entities. These classifications will be used to obtain metabolic markers of parasite growth. These markers will then be incorporated into a modeling framework to predict growth trajectories.