Carnegie Mellon University
Wood Neuro Research Group

Carnegie Mellon University

Wood Neuro Research Group
Carnegie Mellon University  ›  Wood Neuro Research Group  ›  About the PI

Sossena Wood, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

Sossena Wood, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

Assistant Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, Biomedical Engineering
Courtesy Appointments: Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Neuroscience Institute

Bio

She is originally from the Washington DC metropolitan area. Dr. Wood completed her doctorate in 2018 and was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow, National GEM Consortium PhD Fellow, Pitt STRIVE Fellow, and received Pitt’s Provost Development Fund. She received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 2011 and believes the platform of her success sprung from the Pitt EXCEL program.

 

Education

Research


Her research interests involve developing inclusive, multi-modal, noninvasive hemodynamic imaging techniques and data analysis to visualize and quantify vascular disease management and treatment with neural effects and neural disorders, especially sickle cell disease (SCD). By using complementary noninvasive imaging modalities (EEG, NIRS, and MRI), patients and the neurovascular community would benefit from a comprehensive hemodynamic imaging method that allows better large and small vessel visualization to understand 1) the impact of vascular dysfunction (e.g., occlusion, stiffness) on tissue perfusion, 2) neural activity and function, and 3) the patient’s social and behavioral function. Her lab also focuses on developing inclusive neurotechnology that incorporates strategies to overcome the barriers that melanin and hair-type present to fNIRS devices. Dr. Wood’s research group and its collaborators are working to not only focus on fNIRS but other neurotechnology that has excluded certain communities from being well-represented in research due to similar barriers.


Dr. Wood’s dissertation work was featured in more than eight peer-reviewed journal articles, 34 international abstracts, five international talks, and a segment of NBC Learn. Dr. Wood is an awardee of the following awards: 2013 University of Pittsburgh’s Rising African American Leaders, National Institutes of Health (NIH) F31, New Pittsburgh Courier’s FAB 40, NSBE’s 2017 Mike Shinn Distinguished Member of the Year (Female), Professional Women’s Network, and 2021 Women of Color STEM Conference Technology Rising Stars. Dr. Wood served two-terms as the National Chairperson of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) as well as other leadership roles within the organization. While committed to advancing neurological health, Dr. Wood is also committed to engaging and empowering youth from marginalized communities to pursue STEM degrees locally and globally.


Dr. Wood enjoys creating with her hands and laughing in her spare time. She enjoys exercising, art, cooking, braiding, music, water, and new experience while traveling.

Publications

Recent publication and citation statistics are featured on Google Scholar: [click here] || Research Gate: [click here]

*My authorship is in bold, and the students I advised are underlined.

Journal Publications (Peer-Reviewed)

  1. Roy, S., Wu, J., Cao, J., Disu, J., Bharadwaj, S., Meinert-Spyker, E., Grover, P., Kainerstorfer, J. and Wood, S., “Exploring the Impact and Influence of Melanin on Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Measurement,” Journal of Biomedical Optics,29(S3), S33310 (2024), doi: 10.1117/1.JBO.29.S3.S33310   *Awarded one of the Top Papers in JBO published for 2024
  2. Kwasa, J., Peterson, H., Jones, L., Karrobi, K., Parker, T., Nickerson, N., and Wood, S., “Demographic Reporting and Phenotypic Exclusion in fNIRS.” Frontiers in Neuroscience, Brain Imaging Methods. 2023, May. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2023.1086208/full
  3. De Zanche, N., van den Berg, C., Brunner, D., Murphy-Boesch, J., Rispoli, J.,  Adriany, G., Avdievich, N., Boulant,  N., Wyger Brink, W., Brown, R., Fiedler, T., Gilbert, K., Golestani Rad, L., Gruber, B., Keil, B., Kraff, O., Magill, A., Mareyam, A.,  Navarro de Lara, L., Oh, S., Rao, M., Santini, T., Steensma, B., Winter, L., Wood, S., and Yetişir, F., “ISMRM Best Practices for Safety Testing of Experimental RF Hardware,” ISMRM, 2022, March. https://www.ismrm.org/safety/RF_Hardware_Safety_Testing_2022-03.pdf
  4. Wu, J., TabAssum, S., Brown, W., Wood, S., Yang, J., and Kainerstorfer, J., “Two-layer analytical model for estimation of layer thickness and flow using Diffuse Correlation Spectroscopy,” PloS One 2022, September.
  5. Santini, T., Wood, S., Krishnamurthy N., Martins, T., Aizenstein, H., and Ibrahim, T.S., "Improved 7 Tesla Transmit Field Homogeneity with Reduced Electromagnetic Power Deposition Using Coupled Tic Tac Toe Antennas," Nature Scientific Reports, 2021, February, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-79807-9.
  6. Wood, S., Santini, T., Krishnamurthy N., Martins, T., Farhat, N., and Ibrahim, T.S., “A Comprehensive Evaluation of an Advanced MRI Anthropomorphic Head Phantom, NMR in Biomedicine, 2020, December, https://doi.org/10.1002/nbm.4441.  
  7. Wood, S. *, Martins, T. *, and Ibrahim, T.S., “How to design and construct a 3D-printed human head phantom,” Journal of 3D Printing in Medicine, Journal of 3D Printing in Medicine, August 2019, https://doi.org/10.2217/3dp-2019-0016.
  8. Krishnamurthy, N., Santini, T., Wood, S., Kim, J., Aizenstein, H., and Ibrahim, T.S., “Computational and Experimental Evaluations of transmission line Based RF Coils at 7T,” PLoS ONE, 2019, January, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209663.
  9. Santini, T.*, Zhao, Y.*, Wood, S., Krishnamurthy, N., Kim, J., Farhat, N., Martins, T., Zhao, T., and Ibrahim, T.S., “In-vivo and Numerical Analysis of the Eigenmodes Produced by a Multi-Level Tic-Tac-Toe Head Transmit Array for 7 Tesla MRI,” PLoS ONE, November 2018. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206127
  10. Smagula, S., Karim, H., Rangarajan, A., Pasquini, F., Wood, S., Santini, T., Jakicic, J., Reynolds, C., Cameron, J., Vallejo, A., Butters, M., Rosano, C., Ibrahim, T., Erickson, K., and Aizenstein, H., “Association of hippocampal substructure resting-state functional connectivity with memory performance in older adults,” American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, March 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jagp.2018.03.003
  11. Santini, T., Kim, J., Wood, S., Krishnamurthy N., Farhat, N., Maciel, C., Raval, S., and Ibrahim, T.S., “A new RF Transmit Coil for Foot and Ankle Imaging at 7T MRI,” Magnetic Resonance Imaging, September 2017. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mri.2017.09.005
  12. Wood, S., Krishnamurthy, N., Santini, T., Raval, S., Farhat, N., Holmes, J. and Ibrahim, T.S., “Design and Fabrication of a Realistic Anthropomorphic Heterogeneous Head Phantom for MR Purposes,” PLoS ONE, August 2017. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0183168  *top 10% most cited PLOS ONE paper published in 2017