People

Sapan N. Ambani, MD

Associate Professor, Department of Urology

Email: sapan 'at' med.umich.edu / Michigan Research Experts

James A. Ashton-Miller, PhD

Research Professor, Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Email: jaam 'at' umich.edu / PubMed / ORCID / Michigan Research Experts

John O. L. DeLancey, MD

Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Department of Urology

Email: delancey 'at' med.umich.edu / PubMed / ORCID / Michigan Research Experts

J. Brian Fowlkes, PhD

Professor, Department of Radiology, Department of Biomedical Engineering

Email: fowlkes 'at' umich.edu / Google Scholar / PubMed / ORCID / Personal Website / Michigan Research Experts

Brian is a physicist who began working in medical ultrasound during his doctoral studies at the University of Mississippi (MS and PhD in Physics in 1986 and 1988, respectively). His research covers both diagnostic and therapeutic ultrasound with interests in understanding the physical mechanisms and technology as well as its translation to clinical application.  His research includes acoustic droplet vaporization, gas bubbles in high intensity ultrasound including histotripsy, contrast enhanced ultrasound imaging and flow measurement including volume flow estimation using ultrasonic imaging. He came to the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral fellow in 1988, joined the faculty in 1991 and is currently Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Engineering.  He was born and raised in Little Rock, Arkansas and he got his bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Central Arkansas, Conway, AR in 1983.

Kourosh Kalayeh, PhD

Research Investigator, Department of Radiology

Email: kouroshm 'at' umich.edu / Google Scholar / PubMed / ORCID

Kourosh is a mechanical engineer interested in solving problems at the intersection of medical sciences, engineering and mathematics.  He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering, Solid Mechanics (with minor in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science) from University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2018. After a brief period in industry, he realized his strengths lie in academia, prompting him to pursue an academic career.  In 2019, Kourosh co-created the UDUS research group at the University of Michigan as a postdoctoral researcher, where he continued to work until his promotion to a faculty position in the Department of Radiology in 2024.  He was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, where he got his bachelor's degree in Material Science and Engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic) in 2013.  He is currently living in Michigan, USA.

Bryan S. Sack, MD

Chief, Pediatric Urology, Nationwide Children's Hospital, Toledo, OH

Email: bryan.sack 'at' nationwidechildrens.org / PubMed / ORCID 

Bryan is Chief of Pediatric Urology at Nationwide Children's Hospital-Toledo.  He moved to this position in 2024 from the University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital, where he worked since 2018.  His interest on how to better understand pressure and flow within the urinary tract stems from his previous undergraduate education in engineering from the University of Michigan College of Engineering (2006) and research experiences during his pediatric urology fellowship at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School evaluating animal models of urinary dysfunction (2015-2018).  He provides the clinical expertise and curiosity to many of the research questions UDUS attempts to answer. He resides in Ann Arbor with his wife and two daughters. He enjoys Michigan athletics, skiing, and live music.

William W. Schultz, PhD

Professor Emeritus, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Email: schultz 'at' umich.edu / Google Scholar / ORCID / Personal Website / Michigan Research Experts

Bill received his BSME and MSME from Purdue in 1974 and 1976.  He received his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Northwestern in 1982 after spending three years at Owens-Corning Fiberglas.  After beginning his teaching career, he has spent the last 35 years in Mechanical Engineering at University of Michigan.  He finished a three-year term as the Program Director in Fluid Dynamics at the National Science Foundation, Engineering Directorate and a year as the Faculty Director of the Ginsberg Center for Community Service and Learning. He is presently serving as the Immediate Past Chair of the Faculty Senate. He is a fellow of ASME and APS.

Maggien (Man) Zhang, MD, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology

Email: maggiez 'at' med.umich.edu / Michigan Research Experts

Haowei Tai, PhD

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Radiology

Email: hatai 'at' umich.edu / Google Scholar / ORCID

Haowei is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan.  Before joining Michigan, he was a Research Assistant in the Ultrasound Imaging and Therapy Laboratory (UITL) at the University of Texas at Dallas.  He is working on the development of a new ultrasound-based tissue characterization technology.  With a computer science background, he has completed many projects on CT sparse imaging during his MS and his current research interests are ultrasound physics, image processing, signal processing, and machine learning.

Jennifer LaCross, PT, DPT, PhD

KUH-Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology

Email: jalacros 'at' umich.edu / Google Scholar / PubMed / ORCID

Jenny is a dual credentialed athletic trainer and physical therapist with board specialization in pelvic health physical therapy. She obtained her DPT from Washington University in St. Louis in 2014, completed a pelvic health clinical residency at University of Pittsburgh in 2015, and earned her PhD in Physical Therapy from Texas Woman’s University in 2023. As a clinician scientist, Jenny aims to improve the provision of rehabilitation care for individuals identifying as female to help them remain physically active across the lifespan. Her work investigates the intersection of aging, physical activity, and birth injury-related changes on pelvic floor anatomy and motor control, using actigraphy, sEMG, MRI and ultrasound imaging.

Haotian Xie

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Email: harryxie 'at' umich.edu

Haotian Xie is a PhD student at the University of Michigan. He received his BSE from the University of Michigan in 2023 and his current research interest is bio-fluid, especially ureteral peristalsis. Some fun facts about him are that he is a Formula 1 fan and a great bird-watcher who has observed more than 700 species worldwide.

Caroline Wang

Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Email: wangca 'at' umich.edu

Caroline is a senior studying Data Science at the College of Engineering and a Master’s student in the Accelerated Master’s Degree Program in Bioinformatics. She is interested in computer vision and machine learning, especially related to medical applications. She is working with the UDUS on the kidney obstruction projects. She is from New York, NY. 

Sophia Yeras

College of Literature, Science, and The Arts

Email: sophiaye 'at' umich.edu

Sophia is a student in the college of Literature, Science and Arts at the University of Michigan.  She is currently studying for a bachelor's degree in neuroscience. Motivated by a desire to contribute meaningfully to the field of medicine, Sophia has assisted on several projects under the guidance of the UDUS faculties at the University of Michigan school of Medicine.

Kyle Rosol

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Email: krosol 'at' umich.edu

Sara Garcia

College of Literature, Science, and The Arts

Email: sarajuli 'at' umich.edu

Sara is a freshwoman at the University of Michigan studying Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience (BCN). She is working with the UDUS on processing, analysis and segmentation of medical ultrasound images, specifically for machine learning algorithms. She was born and raised in Brownsville, Texas.