Ethan Willbrand

Advisor: JP Yu

Research Interests: Research is where I get to investigate the brain images I’ll spend my career reading as a neuroradiologist. In my undergraduate, this meant using large neuroimaging datasets to link cortical morphology to brain function, human behavior and disorders. Now in the PhD portion of my MD/PhD training, this means helping develop new diagnostic tools using novel MRI techniques like NODDI. I see this work as building the quantitative foundation I’ll carry into clinical practice, where imaging-based biomarkers are increasingly shaping diagnosis and treatment. I want to be physician-scientist who doesn’t just interpret scans, but deeply understands what’s driving the patterns in them.