Personnel

Kedar Narayan, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist, Group Leader

Kedar Narayan is the group leader for the volume EM group at the CMM. He earned a Ph.D. in immunology, and has a research background in chemistry, pathology, and biophysics. Kedar’s work focuses on the use of emerging technologies for cellular imaging. At CMM, he is responsible for FIB-SEM and array tomography, technology development and for driving collaborative projects that use volume EM and correlative imaging approaches to explore cellular mechanisms.

Valentina Baena, Ph.D.

Scientist

Valentina Baena acquired her Ph.D. in biomedical science from the University of Connecticut with an emphasis in cell biology. She specialized in using 3D EM techniques to study a variety of mesoscale structures in developmental biology, neurobiology, immunology and gastrointestinal biology projects. At CMM, she focuses on developing and implementing enhanced protocols for a variety of volume EM studies of cells and tissues.

Adam Harned

Research Associate

Adam Harned is an electron microscopist with extensive industry and research experience concerning the applications of VP-SEM, FE-SEM and TEM technologies for both biological and materials samples. His main role will be assisting in the collection of FIB-SEM data.

Kunio Nagashima

Scientist

Kunio Nagashima has extensive experience developing techniques for preparation of tissue and cellular samples for transmission and scanning electron microscopy. He specializes in the analysis of biological samples by EM and related technologies..

Ryan Conrad

Research Associate

Ryan Conrad works as a research associate and image analyst for the volume EM group at the CMM. Ryan earned his B.Sc. in physics from Boston College with a focus on spectroscopy and optics. His work at the CMM focuses on developing computational tools that accelerate and enhance the segmentation, analysis and visualization of FIB-SEM data.

Heather Rose Berensmann

Research Associate

Heather Rose Berensmann is a Research Associate at CMM-volumeEM. She has an MS and BS in Materials Science and Engineering from Drexel University, and uses her engineering background to develop and execute methods to streamline sample preparation and imaging at our microscopes.

Aayush Bhatawadekar

Post-baccalaureate

Aayush Bhatawadekar is a post-baccalaureate in the CMM-vEM group. He joins us from UC Santa Cruz, where he majored in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He will build on his interests and skills in computer science as he develops and deploys image analysis solutions for vEM data.

Image Annotation Project

This year CMM-vEM built a crowdsourced image annotation project (Etch-a-cell Mito Mega Mix), and we have been joined remotely by approximately 30 students from various high schools in the Frederick area, via the WHK-SIP program.