Dr. Curtis Johnson, PhD is an associate professor within the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware. He earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2013 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Johnson’s research centers on the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to study the mechanics of tissues in the body and how they can be used to understand the structure, function, and health of various organs, with a specific focus on the human brain.
Tell us a little about yourself, your research journey, and how you arrived where you are now.
“I am a mechanical engineer. I earned my bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech then my PhD at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During grad school, I got into MRI research, and when I graduated, I worked as a staff scientist at the Biomedical Imaging Center of the Beckman Institute at UIUC. At Beckman, I made new collaborations and lines of research; I continued to build on that as I started my faculty position in Biomedical Engineering at UD.”
Tell us about your research. What is the area of focus, what are your research goals, and what is the significance of the research?
“My lab develops MRI techniques for assessing brain health. Specifically, we focus on magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) to measure brain mechanical properties — like stiffness — that can tell us about the structure, function, and health of the brain. My lab seeks to advance new MRE methods that can improve the sensitivity and specificity to disease, which we try to demonstrate via studies on both human patients and, recently, on animal models of human disease with funding from ACCEL. The overall significance of brain MRE is as a new, highly sensitive imaging method that can improve our ability to diagnose, stage, and monitor neurological conditions.”
How has the ACCEL program helped with your project (grant writing, mentorship, help accessing funding, etc)?
“I have received two grants from ACCEL that have supported my research — recently a clinical and translational pilot project, and originally a shovel-ready project shortly after I started at UD. I found that first award instrumental in the growth of my research and lab as I was able to support a graduate student to get important data. But I have also received mentorship from the senior ACCEL leadership including Stuart Binder-Macleod and Tom Buchanan who gave me advice on grant writing that I have leaned out throughout my career.”
What do you hope to be the impact of this research, and what future directions do you see related research going?
“In our most recent ACCEL-funded project, we established methods for performing brain MRE on rats with induced pathology similar to multiple sclerosis. The methods we developed resulted in images and measures that are comparable in quality to those from human brain MRE, improving the translatability of findings. By performing preclinical MRE on rodents, we can determine what elements of brain neurobiology affect brain mechanical properties — in this project we found an important effect of neuroinflammation on stiffness. This work will be important in interpreting our MRE measures in patients to better guide treatments.”
Is there anything else you would like to add regarding yourself, your research, or the ACCEL program?
“I am very appreciative of the ACCEL program for supporting junior researchers and helping in building their careers but also supporting those trying to establish new collaborations and research directions.”
More information regarding Dr. Johnson and his research can be found here on the University’s website.