Jacob Berardinelli

Bioengineering Advisor: Dr. Tamer Ibrahim
Psychiatry Advisor: Dr. Milos Ikonomovic

Jacob Berardinelli headshot

Jacob completed a BSc in Biomedical Engineering at Duquesne University and is currently going into his fourth year as a Bioengineering doctoral student. Since beginning the PhD program, he has overtaken responsibility of designing and manufacturing an ex vivo postmortem brain container and cutting guide. The device allows for not only more accurate physician cutting but also faster registration of the ex vivo, in vivo MRI images, and histology. This device is currently being used to track White Matter Hyperintensities but can be used to track a range of diseases. He is also responsible for design improvements to the current 60-channel transmit and 32-channel receive TTT coils and manufacturing all plastics components for coils. His focus for research is a realistic anthropomorphic heterogeneous head phantom that will primarily be used to validate simulated temperature changes as a result of specific absorption rate (SAR) from our in-house Tic-Tac-Toe MRI transmit coils. The phantom will be capable, in conjunction with simulations, of proving safety of any new RF coil or MRI sequence. Mr. Berardinelli has been working hard on creating the novel technologies that psychiatry needs so that he, and other researchers, can continue the process of quantifying psychiatric disorders.